Difference between web analytics and other experiments in Zoho PageSense | Help Guide

Difference between web analytics and other experiments in PageSense

Web Analytics and other PageSense experiments are designed to answer different questions about your website. Web Analytics helps you monitor overall website performance by automatically tracking visitor activity across your website, whereas PageSense experiments focus on understanding visitor behavior and measuring the performance of individual optimization campaigns.

The following sections explain how these features differ in terms of data collection, visitor tracking, reporting, and their intended use cases.

Web Analytics

Other PageSense experiments

Automatically collects data from all pages and all visitors as soon as the PageSense tracking snippet is installed on your website. No additional setup is required.

Requires you to create and launch an experiment before visitor data is collected for that specific feature.

Tracks data based on sessions, allowing you to measure traffic, engagement, and conversions across your website.

Tracks data based on unique visitors who participate in a specific experiment, such as an A/B test, heatmap, or funnel.

Provides quantitative insights, including visitors, sessions, page views, bounce rate, average session duration, acquisition channels, and conversions.

Provides behavioral and optimization insights, helping you understand visitor interactions, identify friction points, and improve conversions.

Gives an overall view of your website's performance and helps identify where visitors come from and how they navigate your website.

Helps you understand why visitors behave in a certain way by analyzing clicks, scrolls, recordings, funnels, surveys, experiments, and personalized experiences.

Data is collected continuously across your website, making it ideal for monitoring traffic trends and overall website performance.

Data is collected only while an experiment is active and only for the pages or audience included in that experiment.

Understanding session-based tracking in Web Analytics

Web Analytics measures visitor activity using sessions. A session represents a group of interactions a visitor performs on your website within a continuous browsing period. By default, a session ends after 30 minutes of inactivity. If the same visitor returns after this period, PageSense starts a new session.
Example : Suppose a visitor lands on your website, browses several pages, and submits a contact form. All these interactions are counted as one session. If the same visitor returns 40 minutes later and continues browsing, the previous session has already expired. PageSense records this as a new session, while still recognizing the visitor as a returning visitor.
This session-based approach helps you accurately measure traffic, engagement, and conversion trends over time.

Understanding visitor-based tracking in experiments

Most PageSense experiments, such as A/B Testing, Heatmaps, Funnels, and Session Recordings, measure participation based on unique visitors. A unique visitor is counted only once, regardless of how many times they return to your website, as long as their browser cookie remains available.
Example : A visitor participates in an A/B test today and returns several times over the next week. Throughout the experiment, PageSense counts that person as one unique visitor, even if they visit multiple times.
If the visitor clears their browser cookies or uses a different browser or device, they may be identified as a new unique visitor.

How data is calculated

The way PageSense calculates metrics differs between Web Analytics and experiments because they use different tracking models.
Web Analytics
Many Web Analytics metrics are calculated using sessions.
For example, Unique Page Views represent the number of sessions during which a page was viewed at least once.
Example : A visitor views the Pricing page during four different sessions over several days.

Session

Pricing page viewed?

Session 1

✓

Session 2

✓

Session 3

✓

Session 4

✓


Unique Page Views = 4
Each session contributes one unique page view because the page was viewed during four separate sessions.
NotesNote: Multiple views of the same page within a single session are counted as one unique page view for that session.
Other PageSense experiments
Most experiment reports calculate visitor-based metrics using unique visitors.
Example : A visitor views the Pricing page four different times while participating in an A/B test.

Visit

Same visitor?

Visit 1

✓

Visit 2

✓

Visit 3

✓

Visit 4

✓

The report records:
  • Unique Visitors: 1
  • Unique Page Views: 1
Because the same visitor viewed the page multiple times, they are counted only once until their browser cookies are cleared.

When should you use Web Analytics?

Use Web Analytics when you want to:
  • Monitor overall website traffic.
  • Analyze visitor acquisition channels.
  • Measure engagement and conversion trends.
  • Identify high-performing and low-performing pages.
  • Track visitor behavior across your entire website.

When should you use PageSense experiments?

Use PageSense experiments when you want to:
  • Understand why visitors abandon a page.
  • Analyze click and scroll behavior.
  • Watch session recordings to identify usability issues.
  • Test multiple page variations using A/B testing.
  • Optimize user journeys with funnels and personalization.
  • Improve conversion rates based on visitor behavior.





We hope this documentation helps make the process easy for you. Please feel free to reach out to us anytime by dropping an email to support@zohopagesense.com if you need more explanation or have any questions.