What is a session?
A session is a set of the user’s interactions with a website within a timeframe.
The session begins when a user visits the website and does one of these things:
- scrolls
- moves a cursor
- clicks something (on desktop)
- taps something (on mobile)
One session can contain many clicks, scrolls, page views and other events. What’s more, one user can open multiple sessions, either within one day or over a longer time span.
These events are recorded as a part of a session:
- mouse movements and clicks
- mobile touches and taps
- window resizing and scrolling
- focusing and blurring elements
- text selection
- input value changes (if keystroke logging is enabled)
- CSS changes
- URL changes
- DOM mutations
When one session ends, another one can be started. By default, a session ends after 30 minutes of inactivity.
Let’s say a user, John, arrives on your website at 11:25 and does one of the actions mentioned above. If he doesn’t do anything after that, the session will end automatically at 11:55. If he continues to interact with the website and the last event takes place at 12:27, the session will end automatically at 12:57.
The session is set to expire after 30 minutes of inactivity. This means that:
If John leaves the page open, goes for a coffee break and comes back 29 minutes later, it stills counts as one session – just like he never left the website.
If John leaves the page open, goes for a coffee break and comes back 31 minutes later, a new session starts. The landing page of that session is the last page of the previous session.
