EngagementHQ tracks Visits, Visitors, and Pageviews. They differ slightly:
Visits: the number of unique visits by a browser. Each Visit creates a new session which lasts until there have been 30 minutes of inactivity. Visits from admins who have logged in are not counted.
Visitors: the number of unique browsers that visit your site.
Pageviews: the number of times a page is loaded.
EngagementHQ tracks Visits and Visitors using cookies. When someone accesses your site for the first time, we drop a cookie in that browser to begin tracking that Visitor in a session, which will count as one Visit. If the same Visitor returns to your site after the session has ended, it will contribute +1 to the Visit count while the Visitor count remains the same.
Pageviews differ slightly from Visits in that Pageviews are the number of times a page is loaded, while Visits track unique browsers.
For example, if a new browser accesses your site in two sessions throughout the day and reloads the same page four times, your counts would be:
Visits: +2
Visitors: +1
Pageviews: +4
Theoretically, your Pageviews and Visit counts will always be higher than your Visitors, and the same user can contribute multiple times to your Pageviews and Visits.
Additionally, the Visitors count should always be viewed as an approximate number for the following reasons:
Registered and logged-in participants are not counted, as the system recognizes them.
Users with cookies disabled in their browser are not counted.
Users who have cleared their browser history or cache are not counted.
The same user visiting the site from different browsers on one device or from different devices will contribute multiple times to the Visitor count.
The tool visit count only increases when a user visits a tool via the project page; it is not counted if they use a standalone link.
Over time, these metrics will help you gauge and compare how projects have performed.