Click vs Session? What Makes the Differences in Reports?

The second Vlog of Conversion.vn will be about click & session. These two concepts are familiar, but I find that many people are confused when using it, especially the newbies. This time, my vlog will help you answer some of the baffling questions related to this topic. The vlog will explain the following subjects

– Which is considered as a click?

– What is a session?

– Why are click and session indicators often different in reports?

– What are the reasons for the differences between these two indicators?

– How to deal with the disparity between these 2 indicators?

Let’s go through this Vlog for the answer.

Here is the text version of the content in the video:

Welcome to the second vlog!

In this topic I would like to discuss about click and session, two simple-as-ABC indicators that almost everyone knows, but I think some of you still are struggling with, especially the new commers. The two most common problems that people are facing are to distinguish between click and session, how they are different, and why the click and session indexes in some cases are not the same.

* First, let’s take a look at what are the differences between click and session.

We have this process: for example, you have an ad banner placed on another website and have a user, they see the banner and click to your website; and when they click on the banner, it creates a click, when people access your website a session is generated. Click is an off-site index, not related to your website, and the index is generated when someone clicks on the banner, which is located outside the website.

Session is an on-site indicator.

As you can see here, the click will accompany with parameters like Impression and CTR. Impression is how many times the banner is displayed. For example, for 1000 times the banner is displayed, how people click is the click through rate – CTR.

For session, in the reports about websites, you will find it comes with parameters such as: Time on site, Bounce Rate, Page Views or Conversion Rate. Those represent for what is on the website, how long people go to the site, which pages people visit then exit, how many pages people access on the website, etc.

If clicking on the banner and visiting the website generate a click and a session, then the ideally the two indicators should be the same on the report. But the problem here is that they are not.

* Why are they different?

When people click on the banner and on the website there are some problems that can occur here:

For example, after clicking on the banner, for some reason, the website can not load, for example, the website is under maintenance, or the website is down then it will still be counted as a click but not as a session. Or in the process of loading the website, the network has an issue which make the website not load, one click is generated but not the same for a session. Because the session on the website has not been loaded. There maybe another case that after clicking on the banner people have already visited the site but the site sometimes does not confirm that it is a session. For example, to identify a session, usually by using Google Analytics, you need to set up tracking code on all of your pages. One possible problem here is that, for example, when you visit a website, the positioning of the code tracking can also affect. For example, in most cases, it is strongly recommended to put the code on the header of the website for it to be able to load as soon as the website starts to load. But in some cases the web developer don’t put this code on the header, maybe somewhere in the body, sometimes in the footer, in the code of the website. In the case when the user visits the website for about 3 seconds but they quickly exit; the tracking code is not loaded in these 3 seconds so sometimes it does not count as a session.

And another reason is that sometimes the developers do not place the code: page A has the code, page B doesn’t then sometimes people click on the banner but get redirected to a site without code tracking then a session will be missed when counting.

Also, an additional problem is that by default Google Analytics assumes a session to last for about 30 minutes. In this 30 minutes there are many possible situations, the most common situation is: for example, people click on a banner to the website then as a session is generated. After viewing the website 15-20 minutes, they exit the website. They visit another website, they see our banner, they click on the banner again, they come back to the site, we will now have two clicks calculated but it still counts as a session. That is the biggest reason for the difference between two Click and Session indicators.

That’s also why when you perform online advertising with an Agency that offers ads like Google Adwords, after you’ve finished running, you have an Adwords report with your Google Analytics in-house report, you see that the click and session metrics vary greatly. Sometimes the difference between these indicators can rise up to 50%, even in some cases can climb to 100%.

Why is there such a big difference?

That’s why some of you do not know, and there are a lot of arguments with the agency about why these two indicators are different. To avoid this situation and to keep it accurate and fair as much as possible for both sides, the two parties before running the ads must have some agreements. For example, when there is the difference between the Google Analytics Session metrics and the Click metrics, the final number should be the average of the metrics or the percentage that both teams agree on.

Or the two parties may use the Third Party Tracking – commonly referred to as Third Party Trackers (eg in Vietnam there are MediaMind, ClickMeter).

Tracking of a Third Party will be relatively accurate, but its weaknesses it is quite expensive, for example MediaMind’s costs will be calculated by the percentage of the campaign it runs, the ClickMeter charges little cheaper.

The use of a third party will be at the discretion of the two parties, including which sides will bear the cost, and should be stated clearly before running the ad. When you work with any side, you should make it clear that the commit index is the clicks or the sessions for easier work for both teams.

Hopefully what I say in this vlog will help you better understand the difference between click and session.

If you have any questions or need to find more or clarifications on these two indicators, please ask in the comments section below of this video.

Thank you.