Understanding Customer Journeys

We have a unique approach to tracking customer journeys, which consist of a series of Visits—key to mapping out the path to a sale.

1. What is a Visit?

• A Visit typically marks the beginning of a session, which is defined by a period of activity on the site. A session generally ends after 30 minutes or more of inactivity.
• The source that drove the first page view of a session is credited with the Visit.
  • Mid-Session Ad Clicks are an exception: If a user clicks an ad from Google Ads, Meta Ads, or Microsoft Ads during an active session, it creates a separate Visit. Our system identifies these clicks by tracking specific identifiers in the URL—GCLID (Google), FBCLID (Meta), and MSCLKID (Microsoft). These mid-session clicks are credited a distinct Visits, even though they occur within the same session.

2. Why Track Customer Journeys?

• Tracking customer journeys enables us to capture all touchpoints that lead to a sale.
• Our attribution models review these touchpoints to determine which channels deserve credit.

FAQs

1. What's the difference between Google Analytics and Northbeam (Sessions vs. Visits)?

Google Analytics and Northbeam share nearly the same definition for a session or visit:

• A session is a period of activity followed by 30 minutes or more of inactivity. New events tracked after 30 minutes will track as a new session.

Visits in Northbeam are comparable to sessions in Google Analytics and should be closely aligned, but often differ for a number of reasons:

Mid-session ad clicks

Google Analytics do not recognize mid-session ad clicks as new sessions -- as we do. See definition above.

Install Location and Priority

A common reason for differences in visits between Northbeam and Google Analytics is the install location and timing of loading the pixel. If the Northbeam pixel is loaded after GA, it's expected that Northbeam will track fewer visits due to bounced visits where the user ended their session after GA finished loading, but before Northbeam loaded.

If tracking these visits is important for you to understand, make sure that Northbeam is loaded in the head element of your pages, and with a high priority, so that it loads as early as GA.

Bots & Scrapers

Visits tracked by Google Analytics are not always real humans visiting your site, but simply bots and scrapers. Northbeam filters bot traffic, search browser robots, and other scrapers by default, resulting in better signal, but fewer tracked visits than Google Analytics.

Large discrepancies

Seeing a significant difference in data between GA and Northbeam? This could indicate that one tool is not installed to track all pages, or that a platform is double-installed and artificially counting sessions.

• Are both pixels installed on the same domains? Does one platform track sessions from a domain that the other does not?
• Are both pixels installed using the same method and/or in the same location?
  • Are there landing pages that aren't being tracked?
  • Are you running active A/B tests where the pixel was only installed on the control and not the variant?
• Analyze sessions by landing page: where are these extra sessions starting?
• Does GA include native mobile sessions that you aren't tracking with Northbeam?

Answering these questions can help determine if GA and Northbeam are looking at different sets of data, and need to be installed differently to track comparable sessions.