Visitors

Pendo refers to your application's end users as visitors. You can find visitor data throughout Pendo and access specific visitor metrics through People > Visitors in Pendo.

To see data in People > Visitors, your installation must send a visitorId for each end user (or identify them through an integration). Pendo creates and updates visitor records automatically from your install script or integrations based on the visitorId values you send. You don’t create visitors manually in the UI. For guidance on choosing Visitor IDs and setting them, see Choose IDs and metadata.

This article reviews how to interpret the Overview tab on the Visitors page in Pendo. For details on the Visitor Reports tab, see Visitor reports.

Note: In Pendo, visitor counts always represent unique users. This is different from views, which can include repeated interactions by the same user. Any time views are referenced in the app, they include repeated views, whereas visitors always represent unique users who have viewed or interacted with something.

Visitor metrics

The Overview tab on the Visitors page provides a summary of visitor data based on the filters you selected at the top of the page: segment, date range, account, app, and, when available, metadata. You can apply one visitor, account, or historical metadata filter. The metadata filter scopes the summary and per-row metrics but doesn't change which visitors appear in the table or how name search works. When the Add to dashboard action is available, you can also add the high-level visitor metrics to a dashboard with the selected date range, segment, account, and app scope.

Below the filters are a few high-level metrics. These metrics adjust with any selected filters:

Number of visitors. This is the total number of unique active visitors.

Average daily time on app. This is the average amount of time each visitor spends on your app(s) on a daily basis. To understand how this is calculated, consider the following example. During a 3-day date range, you have two visitors (Sally and John) who visit your app.

• Sally visits on days 1 and 2, spending 5 and 10 minutes on your app, respectively.
• John visits on days 2 and 3, spending 15 and 20 minutes respectively.
• To calculate the total time spent on your app, we add up the minutes each visitor spent: 5 min + 10 min + 15 min + 20 min = 50 minutes.
• Since both visitors visited on the second day, it counts twice. Therefore, the total number of days is four.
• The average daily time on the app is calculated by dividing the total time by the total days: (5 min + 10 min + 15 min + 20 min) / 4 days = 12.5 minutes.

For more information, see Time on app and page calculations.

Frequency. Broken into three categories (low, medium, and high), this graphic shows you how often your app is used. Frequency is calculated based on the number of days where a visitor sent any event in the previous 30 days (up until yesterday; not including today). This metric first filters by the selected date range (for example, last 180 days), then looks at the frequency of the visitors who sent at least one event during that date range over the last 30 days.

When available, select the Add to dashboard icon on the Frequency card to add a Visitor Frequency Snapshot widget to a dashboard. The widget preserves the current app, segment, and account filters and uses the Frequency card's fixed 30-day window rather than the page's selected date range.

• Low if a visitor was active at least 1, but no more than 4, of the last 30 days.
• Medium if a visitor was active at least 5, but no more than 12, of the last 30 days.
• High if a visitor was active at least 13 of the last 30 days.

Visitors who sent no events during the selected date range aren't included.

You can also monitor visitor frequency with the Visitor Frequency dashboard widget. In the widget settings, choose Snapshot (last 30 days) to show a single High, Medium, and Low stacked bar, or Trend (last 13 weeks) to show the weekly trend. The Snapshot view always uses the trailing 30 days ending now and ignores the dashboard-level date range.

Line chart. This page also provides a line chart that shows the total number of visitors, events, or time on app on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis (depending on your date range filter) over the selected date range. Select the dropdown menus in the chart title to update the data.

If you have more than one app selected in your filters, you can select an app from the legend to view or hide that app’s data from the chart. You can also hover over the line chart to view the specific totals and date ranges.

In the top-right corner of the line chart, select View in Data Explorer to generate a pre-filled Data Explorer report and analyze the chart data. Any active metadata filters on the overview chart carry over to the generated report. With this report, you can compare segments and date ranges, apply advanced filters, drill into visitor and account details, customize visuals, and save the report to a dashboard for ongoing insights.

Visitors table

Below the line chart, the Visitors table contains a visitor list based on your selected filters. By default, the table shows the following columns:

• Visitor ID. The ID value that’s passed into Pendo through your install script and associated with the visitor on your site. This ID uniquely identifies a visitor, and you can select this value to view more details about the visitor. When a visitor display name mapping is set up, visitor labels in the table use the mapped value and fall back to the Visitor ID when the mapped field is empty. For more information, see Visitor details. Duplicate Visitor IDs display if the visitor is associated with multiple accounts. To remove duplicates, remove the Account ID column from the table.
• Last Visit (All Apps). The timestamp of the most recent Page load, Feature click, or Track Event on your site from that visitor, regardless of whether that particular Page or Feature has been tagged as an activity on your site or not.
• Number of Days Active. The total number of days that this visitor was active in the selected date range.
• Number of Events. The total number of events that a visitor has sent, including Page loads, Feature clicks, Track Events (if enabled), and guide events.

There are also several actions above the table:

• Show all visitors. When the checkbox for Include visitors with no events in selected segment (ignores other filters) is selected, this setting populates visitors with no events in the table. In People > Visitors, it ignores the date range, application, and account filters and displays all visitors in the selected segment. In the Visitors tab on a specific account's details page, the list remains scoped to the account you're viewing while ignoring the other filters. This allows you to view visitors for whom you've previously uploaded custom metadata, even if Pendo hasn't captured any events yet.
• Create Visitor Report. If you review a specific list of visitors frequently, you can save the list as a report. After you select this option, you can name the report and find it by selecting the Visitor Reports tab at the top of the page. For more information, see Visitor reports.
• Upload CSV. If you need to update custom metadata values for visitors in bulk, use the Upload CSV icon. For more information, see Manage custom metadata fields.
• Download CSV. If you need to download a particular set of users, select the Download CSV icon. You can also use this set of users to create a custom segment with a CSV file; for more information, see our article on Segments.
• Edit Columns. If you want to update the columns that appear in the table, select the columns icon in the top-right of the section. All modifications are reflected in the visitor report or CSV file if you choose to take either of these actions. This also updates the columns in the Visitors table on an account's details page.