Question

Is it possible break down sessions by the event/pageview that started them?

  • 3 August 2023
  • 3 replies
  • 56 views
M

Hello friends!

I’m interested in seeing a breakdown of the first action done in my sessions. For example, if sessions start most frequently by a user arriving on a specific Page, then that Page would be highest in the breakdown. If sessions start mostly by a user triggering a Defined Event, then that Defined Event would be the top of the breakdown. I’m aware that I can look at an individual session and see all the actions in it, but I’m looking for aggregate numbers here. 

Is there a way to do this? Alternatively, is there a way to filter events and pageviews to only the instances that started a session?

Thanks!

3 replies

brittanyluttrell
Rank

Hey there! Great question.

I think your best bet is to use a Journey for this, using Starts With > Visited Page or an Event. However Journeys are only available on Advanced and Enterprise plans so if you don’t have one of those then a Journey won’t be of much help here.

Beyond a Journey, I’m not sure there’s a really good all-in-one solution to show you this information about your end users. I really had to think hard about alternatives to a Journey and I fear I’m coming up short here.

An idea I had is you could use a Metric that looks something like:

  • Unique Sessions
  • Any Activity
    • Where the Visited Page > (the page you know most of your users start their sessions on)
  • Then group the results by the various properties

However this isn’t showing you the order these things take place in, just how many times they’re happening and by frequency. You might be able to use a Dashboard with a bunch of Metric Dimensionality cards, each one grouped by a different property, and see if you can detect any patterns from those.

I really wish I had a better suggestion!

Can you say more about why you’re trying to do this? What’s the end goal or business question you’re trying to answer? Sometimes knowing this can help with brainstorming alternative solutions.

Brittany Luttrell (she/her) — Senior Technical Support Specialist
M

Hey there! Great question.

I think your best bet is to use a Journey for this, using Starts With > Visited Page or an Event. However Journeys are only available on Advanced and Enterprise plans so if you don’t have one of those then a Journey won’t be of much help here.

Beyond a Journey, I’m not sure there’s a really good all-in-one solution to show you this information about your end users. I really had to think hard about alternatives to a Journey and I fear I’m coming up short here.

An idea I had is you could use a Metric that looks something like:

  • Unique Sessions
  • Any Activity
    • Where the Visited Page > (the page you know most of your users start their sessions on)
  • Then group the results by the various properties

However this isn’t showing you the order these things take place in, just how many times they’re happening and by frequency. You might be able to use a Dashboard with a bunch of Metric Dimensionality cards, each one grouped by a different property, and see if you can detect any patterns from those.

I really wish I had a better suggestion!

Can you say more about why you’re trying to do this? What’s the end goal or business question you’re trying to answer? Sometimes knowing this can help with brainstorming alternative solutions.

 

Thank you so much for the details answer Brittany! That all  makes sense, I’ll try out the methods you suggested and see what I find. 

In terms of why I need that, I’m working on an ecommerce platform on web, where users can start their journey on many different pages. They could go to the homepage, start from a specific product page (which they found through search or an ad), etc. And what I want to do is a) see where the users start their journey the most and b) how does the journey differ based on where they start. For example, is the funnel from viewing a product to completing the checkout different based on whether they start from the homepage or specifically from the product page. 

It’s a very key question for us, which is why I was hoping I could somehow isolate the pageviews that start a session. 

lindsay
Rank
Userlevel 5
Badge

Hey @mentat-analytics! 

Thanks so much for sharing more about your use case! We’ve reached out to your CSM to let them know more about your request so you can continue the conversation with them going forward. 😊

Please let us know if you have any more questions!

 

Lindsay- Community Manager

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