Traffic Session & Insights Dashboard

Measuring traffic coming to your SheerID hosted program is key for understanding the performance of your marketing campaigns and identifying improvements that might increase conversion. By tracing metrics like median session duration, you can see how long visitors stay engaged with the SheerID verification form and where they are dropping out of the process, while traffic source data reveals how visitors are finding your marketing programs. This information helps you pinpoint which content and marketing channels are successfully holding visitor attention and driving conversions.

The Traffic & Session Insights dashboard provides an overview of traffic visiting your program forms that are hosted by SheerID. Data for the dashboard is produced using Google Analytics. The dashboard uses Google Analytics to show an overview of traffic visiting your SheerID program forms. It includes details on form views, engagement, and session duration, geolocation, device, and browser.

The dashboard has filters for session date range, program name, and yes/no buttons for filtering out inactive programs. Staging programs are filtered out for the report. The default settings will show the last 14 days with all currently-active programs. The Google Analytics datasets are refreshed every six hours.

To access the Traffic & Session Insights dashboard, login to your MySheerID account and go to the Reporting tab. Open the dropdown menu next to Performance Dashboard and select Traffic & Sessions Insights Dashboard from the list of available reports. You must have Reporter permissions to view and download reports in MySheerID.

Only programs hosted by SheerID will have data available for this dashboard. SheerID does not have access to this data for API or Hybrid programs.

Glossary

Session	A group of user interactions with your forms that occur within a given time frame. Think of a session as a "visit." It begins when a visitor first lands on your form and ends after 30 minutes of inactivity
Visitor	A visitor is a unique user interacting with the verification form during a session
Engaged Session	An engaged session is any session that meets at least one of the following criteria: The session lasts longer than 10 seconds The session includes two or more page or screen views The session includes a conversion event
First Visit Session	A session is considered a first visit if the visitor is interacting with the form for the first time based on cookies tracked in their browser
Bounce	A session that is not engaged. The visitor left the site or app without meeting any of the criteria for an "engaged session"
Abandoned Before Submitted	A session is considered abandoned before submitted if the visitor starts to input their personal information into the form, but does not submit the personal information
Abandoned After Submitted	A session is considered abandoned after submitted if the visitor submits their personal information, but does not complete the verification process
Session Duration	The duration of the session in seconds starting from the first event to the last event
Page View	An event that is counted every time a visitor loads or reloads a page on your form One page view is one event: If a user visits a single page, that's one page view. If they then click a link to a new page, that's a second page view Repeated views count: If a visitor reloads the same page or navigates away and then returns to it, each of those instances counts as a separate page view It is a component of a session: A single session can, and often does, consist of multiple page views
Click	An outbound click is defined as a click on a link that takes a visitor to a domain different from the one they are currently on
Page Referrer	The full URL of the previous page the visitor was on before landing on the current page. This parameter provides a crucial piece of the visitor journey by showing the source of a visitor's navigation. Most of the time, the Page Referrer URL is the brand's shopping site, since the visitors usually start the shopping journey at pages hosted by the brand. Additionally, if the visitor goes to the SheerID hosted form directly, we do not pick up a Page Referrer URL. In these cases, "Unknown" is listed as the page referrer value.
Traffic Source	The specific domain, publisher, or platform where the traffic originated. Traffic source data is mostly based on UTM parameters. If customers do not pass UTM parameters in the query string of the page location URL, we are unlikely to see traffic source data. In these cases, "Unknown" is listed as the traffic source value.
Traffic Medium	The general category of the traffic source. Traffic medium data is mostly based on UTM parameters. If customers do not pass UTM parameters in the query string of the page location URL, we are unlikely to see traffic medium data. In these cases, "Unknown" is listed as the traffic source medium. Common mediums include: "Organic": unpaid search engine traffic "Paid" or "cpc": paid search ads "Referral": links from other websites "Email": traffic from email campaigns "Social": traffic from social media platforms "Direct": visitors who typed the URL directly or used a bookmark
Last Step	The last step in the verification process that the visitor got to when interacting with the verification form: Collect Personal Info: The number of sessions where the visitors started inputting personal information into the verification form but did not submit the information to SheerID Complete Verification: The number of sessions where the visitor completed the verification process Document Upload Presented: The number of sessions where the visitors were presented with the option to upload a document but didn't proceed with uploading Bounced: The number of sessions where the visitor bounced before inputting their information into the form Organizations Displayed: The number of sessions where the visitors opened the organization dropdown list and did not proceed with submitting personal information to SheerID SSO Displayed: The number of sessions where the visitors were presented with an SSO authentication method and did not complete the verification method
Device Category	The category of the device that the visitor is using when interacting with the SheerID hosted form. Example: desktop, tablet, mobile
Web Browser	The web browser of the device that the visitor is using when interacting with the SheerID hosted form. Example: Chrome, Firefox, Safari

Calculations

Bounce Rate	Bounced Sessions / Total Sessions
Abandoned Before Submitted Rate	Abandoned Before Submitted Sessions / Total Sessions
Abandoned After Submitted Rate	Abandoned After Submitted Sessions / Total Sessions
Engaged Session Rate	Engaged Sessions / Total Sessions
First Visit Sessions	First Visit Sessions / Total Sessions
Returning Visitor Rate	Returning Visitors / Total Unique Visitors

FAQ

Does this capture data from API programs?

No. API programs are not hosted by SheerID so we do not get the footprint from Google Analytics when users interact with those forms.

Does this capture data from Hybrid programs?

Yes and no. Hybrid programs are implemented in a way where part of the consumer flow lives on the customer's site (which is out of our visibility), and part of it lives in our site (like doc review, for example). We would be able to show metrics on traffic coming to our hosted sites only.

Are visitors in Google Analytics the same thing as users in SheerID's data?

No. Google Analytics has their own method for identifying users (we call them Visitors) that doesn't translate to SheerID's user definition. Here is the documentation on how Google collects data on users.

SheerID creates a unique user_id based on the personal information that a person submits when verifying.

Read more about Google Analytics collected events here.

What does it mean when I see an "Unknown" value in a tile?

In some cases, Google Analytics does not pick values for a few fields. In these cases, we list "Unknown" as the value. This is most common in the Page Referrer URLs, the Traffic Source, and the Traffic Medium tiles. See the definitions in the Glossary above for those fields for reasons why Google Analytics might not capture data in those fields.