Session and Source - Overview

Learn how MoEngage tracks user sessions and traffic sources across web and mobile apps, including session definitions and source attribution.

Session

Session Analysis helps you understand how users interact with your web and mobile apps, enabling you to improve your product and design. By analyzing sessions, you can see the quality of user experiences on your app and website.

What Is a Session?

A session represents a user’s series of interactions on your website or app within a specific timeframe. These sessions are primarily tracked by recording the events and activities users perform on their devices.

Sessions are specific to individual devices. User activity or events that occur on the server side are not included within a session.

How Is It Calculated?

A session begins with the first event or activity a user performs on a device. The timestamp of this initial action marks the session’s start time.

A session ends under the following circumstances:

• Logout: The user logs out of the application.
• Source change: The user enters the session from a different traffic source while the current session is active. All sessions are associated with source information. This source data, derived from UTM parameters, includes properties such as the traffic source, medium, and campaign. The source can be organic or paid. A source is considered different only if one or more of its properties are not identical to the existing session’s source properties.
• Inactivity: The user remains inactive for longer than the specified inactivity period (default: 30 minutes).

Each session has a defined start and end time. All events and activities performed between these times are considered part of that session. Session duration is calculated as the difference between the session’s start and end times.

Interaction vs. Non-Interaction Events

User events within a session are considered interactive when they:

• Start a new session, even if the app or website is in the background.
• Extend the current session, even if the app or website is in the background.
• Contain source and session information.

Events required for internal use or technical purposes, or not directly generated by user actions, are considered non-interaction events. These events do not affect session calculations and:

• Do not start a new session, even when the app/site is in the foreground.
• Do not extend the session.
• Do not contain source and session information.

For example, the Notification Received event is a non-interaction event. It does not increase session time and is not counted as a session event.

For more information on specifying non-interactive events, refer to the MoEngage developer documentation: Android SDK, iOS SDK, and Web SDK.

UTM parameter is mandatory for session analysis. For more information, refer to Source Analysis.

Source

User source is a key element in measuring the ROI of marketing efforts. By analyzing sources, you can evaluate traffic quality and engagement to identify the most effective sources, mediums, and campaigns.

Source Properties

UTM Parameters

UTM parameters are used to analyze the performance of different traffic sources. By default, the MoEngage SDK automatically captures UTM parameters from the URL for web traffic and from deep links for mobile apps.

MoEngage supports the following UTM parameters:

• utm_source: Identifies the source of the traffic, such as a specific website, app, or link. (Examples: YouTube, Instagram, Google)
• utm_medium: Identifies the type of channel used. (Examples: push notification, banner ad, email)
• utm_campaign: Identifies the name of a specific marketing campaign. (Examples: Newyear, Bigbillionday)
• utm_term: Identifies the search terms used for paid advertising traffic. (Example: Mobile+sale)
• utm_content: Identifies the specific content used within an ad or campaign. (Examples: banner, video, product image)

In the following URL, utm_source and utm_medium are the parameter names, and MoEngage and email are their respective values:

https://www.testdomain.com/?utm\_source=MoEngage&utm\_medium=email&utm\_campaign=Newyear &utm_term=mobile+sale&utm_content=image

User-Defined Parameters

To utilize Source Analysis effectively, UTM parameters or custom user-defined parameters are required. Without these, information about the source, campaign, medium, content, term, and any custom user-defined parameters will be unavailable. Ensure that all marketing links, referral links, and key-value pairs include UTM or custom parameter information. To enable user-defined parameters, contact the MoEngage support team.

Many marketers use custom source parameters that are specific to their business needs. MoEngage also supports these custom parameters. In addition to the standard UTM parameters, you can define up to five custom parameters for your apps and websites. The MoEngage SDKs will recognize these new parameters in the URL as source properties and automatically include them with all events.

In push notifications, if a deep link is absent or does not contain source information, the SDKs will search for source properties within the key-value pairs.

Attribution

MoEngage employs a last-click attribution model. This means all user activity and events are attributed to the source of the user’s most recent click. The session duration defines the attribution window.

For example, if a user arrives via Google Ads, remains active for a session lasting five minutes, and triggers 15 events, the source property value for all 15 events will be Google Ads. If, during the next session, the user arrives organically, the events in that session will not have any source information attributed to them.

Use Cases

As a marketer or a product owner, you can answer the following questions with Session and Source Analysis:

• How do total session counts and the number of sessions per user trend over time?
• What is the typical depth of a user session in terms of total events and unique event types triggered?
• How many sessions include a specific conversion event (for example, purchase and signup)
• What is the average time elapsed between consecutive sessions for a given user?
• How do user activity and key event occurrences differ based on the source, campaign, or medium through which the user arrived?
• What is the performance of traffic sources?
• Which MoEngage campaign types are driving the best outcomes, engagement, and retention?
• How much conversion and revenue is driven from traffic sources?
• How well is a particular channel performing?

Getting Started

Next Steps

• Analysis