Activity: see live visitors on your Shopify store

Shopify’s own Live View shows where your visitors are right now. Store Decode’s Activity shows what each live visit does on your Shopify store: the sections it saw and clicked, the products it viewed, what it added to the cart, and whether it reached checkout. A page view arrives within about a minute of a page opening. Visits are grouped, newest first, so you can see that tracking works and follow a visit of your own step by step.

The sample store’s visits arriving one by one are on live view for Shopify.

What Activity tells you

Activity covers the last 48 hours. It prints events, never totals: no count of visitors, sessions, orders or money appears anywhere on the page. A visit is a session: one stretch of browsing in one browser, not a person. Store Decode’s counts run lower than Shopify’s, so Activity shows what arrived, not a figure to set against Shopify’s.

Each visit is a group of cards on a timeline. A page view’s card shows the page and how long ago, then chips for what was measured: clicks, dead clicks, how far the visitor scrolled and time on page. Under the chips, a thin bar has one segment for each section of the page, in page order. Teal marks a section that was on screen and grey one that was not. A short tick marks where the first screen ends. The line under the bar says how many sections were seen, which ones were clicked and how many dead clicks there were.

Events from Shopify’s web pixel appear in the same visit: Added to cart, Reached checkout and Placed an order, plus removals from the cart and searches.

Where to find it

Open Activity from the Store Decode menu in your Shopify admin. On Home, while Store Decode is setting up, the setup card’s Watch activity → link opens it too.

The page header holds Start a check and a Help menu. What the words mean explains every term on the page, How Activity works opens this page, and Talk to us opens Help inside the app.

Reading it

The page reads from top to bottom: a status bar, Latest on your store, then the list of visits.

The status bar

The status line says whether the page is watching and when it last updated. Next to it is a badge that reads Page view seen and how long ago, or Waiting for the first page view. Select it to open the list of what is tracked and when each kind of event was last seen. Select a seen row to open the event that proved it.

The bar’s buttons:

• Pause updates holds the list still while you read. The page keeps checking, and when a new visit arrives a note reads New visits arrived with Show. Resume updates lets go.
• The refresh button, the circular arrow, checks now.
• Watch closely checks more often for a short while.
• Simple and Detailed switch how much each row says. Simple shows what happened, the page or product, the device, the country and how long ago. Detailed adds the visit’s short code, how many updates the page sent, the paint time and the visitor’s consent.

Latest on your store

Four tiles (Page view, Add to cart, Checkout and Order) say when each last happened in the last 48 hours. A tile shows how long ago, never how many. A page view tile adds the page and the device. An add to cart tile adds the product. A checkout or order tile reads View this visit. The icons are coloured by step: blue for the shopping steps, green for an order. Select a tile to open that event or its visit. A kind that has not happened yet reads Not yet, with what makes it appear.

The list of visits

Tabs narrow the list: All visits, With a cart, Reached checkout, Ordered, Searches and Dead clicks. No tab shows a count.

Visits that had an event in the last 5 minutes sit under Active now. The rest sit under Earlier. Each row shows:

• the device, and the country when it is known;
• where the visit came from, with the site’s logo when Store Decode knows it: Direct, From Google, or a tagged link such as Facebook · paid, then its campaign name;
• how many pages it viewed and when it started;
• how far it got: four segments for Viewed a product, Added to cart, Started checkout and Ordered, then the furthest step in words, with its icon. The shopping steps are blue and an order is green. A visit that only browsed reads Browsed, with the segments empty;
• its latest event and how long ago, for example “Removed from cart · just now”.

A segment is filled only when that visit’s own events show it. A visit that added to cart from a collection page, with no product page, leaves the first segment empty. The avatar beside the visit takes the same colour, so a visit that ordered stands out green in the list.

The filters narrow the list by page, device, country or consent, or by a product, collection or page you type. Group by switches between visits and a flat list by time. Open a visit to see its events on a timeline, oldest first. Under the timeline, Only this visit shows that visit on its own. When the list holds only a visit’s latest events, the line reads Showing the latest N events of this visit. with Show the whole visit. In Detailed, About this visit adds the screen size, the browser and the pixel events.

A page view keeps growing while the visit goes on. A card marked Updated has new facts since it first appeared, and New marks an event that just arrived. Each chip shows its own one-line help when you point at it.

Cart in this visit

Use Only this visit on a visit that added to the cart, or reached checkout, and Cart in this visit sits beside its cards. In the full list, an open visit with a cart event shows Cart in this visit: Open this visit alone to see its cart. Show the cart opens it on its own. With a filter on, no cart shows. Before checkout it lists each product and variant with its quantity, worked out from the visit’s adds and removes. It shows no prices, because the cart event carries none.

Once checkout starts, the lines come from Shopify’s checkout. Each line shows its unit price, marked “each”, when Shopify sent a currency. A line the visit did not add reads In the cart from an earlier visit. A subtotal appears only when Shopify sent one and a currency, and its caption says it is after discounts. Prices are Shopify’s: Store Decode never multiplies or adds them.

A visit with 100 or more events reads This visit has too many events to list its cart. instead of lines.

Opening a card

Select Details on a page view and a window opens with every fact recorded for it. A row of six figures leads: Time on page, Sections seen, Clicks, Scrolled, First paint and Server reply. A figure the page did not send reads —, never 0. Beside it, Sections lists every section of the page from top to bottom, with an icon for its kind, its name, a bar for its time on screen and its clicks and dead clicks. A section that was not on screen reads Not seen. The line First screen ends here marks the end of the first screen, and None below this line was on screen marks where the seen sections stop. The bars compare time on screen within this one page, never across pages.

The tabs begin with Page details, then the sections seen and clicked, the clicks, images, product cards, product page, Cart widgets and filters. A tab appears only when the page view has something for it. Simple keeps the window to what a merchant reads: it leaves out the handle, the theme, the layout, the update times, the navigation type, the server reply and the raw record. Detailed shows all of them, with Copy raw record. Previous and Next move through the visit’s page views.

Section names read as the theme names them. A name used twice on a page reads “(2nd)”, “(3rd)” and so on. Theme ids appear only in Detailed.

A collection page’s card reads “N cards shown · M in the collection”: the product cards the script saw beside the collection’s own count. The two numbers are never combined into a share. A product page lists option changes, add-to-cart clicks and the controls they were on, and whether the theme’s sticky add-to-cart bar was shown or used. Cart widgets is about the cart page’s own controls, such as the discount field. “Discount field opened” means the field was opened or focused; it does not say a code was accepted.

An event from the web pixel opens its own tables. Added to cart gives the product, the variant and the quantity as Shopify sent them, and Where it was clicked names the control clicked just before it: Main button, Sticky bar or Product card. A Checkout or Order lists its lines and units.

A dash (—) is not a zero. It marks a fact a page view or event could not carry, such as the sticky bar on a page view recorded by an earlier version of the script.

How often it updates

The page checks for new events every 30 seconds while it is open and visible. Watch closely checks every 10 seconds for two minutes, and so does a running check. After 15 minutes of watching it stops and offers Keep watching. The script sends a page view about 30 seconds after a page opens, or when the visitor leaves it, so a page view shows within about a minute.

Your first visit

Until the first visit arrives, Activity shows Watching for your first visit. It says a page view shows within about a minute of a page opening on your store. It lists Page view, Add to cart, Checkout and Order, the last three marked “When one happens”. Open your store and Copy store link let you make that first visit yourself.

If nothing arrives, the card lists the usual reasons: a browser where “Don’t count my visits” is on, a cookie banner not yet accepted, or a page opened less than a minute ago. Links go to Turn on the app embed, the Troubleshooting guide and Talk to us. When the first page view arrives, a banner reads First page view received with the time and the device.

Check your tracking

Start a check is the page’s main button. It opens your store in a new tab with a link tagged for your visit, and a card called Your check follows that visit. Browse a collection, open a product, add it to the cart and go to checkout. Each step turns from Waiting to Seen, with what was recorded and when. Steps that come later read Not yet.

1. Opened the store
2. Viewed a collection
3. Viewed a product
4. Added to cart
5. Reached checkout
6. Placed an order (optional, and only on a development store)

The card also holds the tagged link with Copy and Open it again, and Show the row beside a seen step opens its event. While the visit has no event yet, the card lists why nothing may arrive. Before you start:

• Use a private window if “Don’t count my visits” is on in this browser: the script sends nothing from it.
• On a store with a cookie banner, accept analytics first. A banner that reports the choice to Shopify sends nothing once declined.
• Allow a minute before you look for each step.

The check visit counts in your numbers like any other visit. While a check runs, the main button reads End check, and a check ends by itself after 48 hours. If a step stays on Waiting, Store Decode troubleshooting has the usual causes, one per heading.

In the sample store

The sample store, Tidewell Home, is invented. Its Activity card on the live view page shows six visits, newest first. The newest came from instagram.com on a phone: it saw the hero’s first slide and Bestsellers, then added to cart, just now. Another, from an email link, saw slide 2 and made a dead click on Why Tidewell, 38 seconds ago.

Try this

• Run Start a check right after you switch on the app embed, and follow each step of Your check while you browse in the other tab.
• Open the Reached checkout tab, then Only this visit on a visit, and set the sections it saw beside the page map for the same day.

Common questions

How do I see live visitors on Shopify?

Shopify’s Live View in your admin shows how many visitors are on your store and where they are. Activity adds what each visit does on your pages: the sections it saw and clicked, the products, the cart and checkout.

Can I watch a visitor browse in real time?

Not as a recording: Store Decode makes no recordings of your visitors and reads no keystrokes. You see each page view and event as it arrives, within about a minute of a page opening, with the sections seen and clicked.

Why can Activity show fewer visits than Live View?

Activity shows only visits whose events arrived at Store Decode. A visitor who declined analytics in a cookie banner that reports the choice to Shopify sends nothing, and some ad blockers stop the script. Why the numbers differ explains each reason.

Does Activity show who the visitor is?

No. The visit code is a short one-way code made from the visit. It lets you follow one visit’s views, cart, checkout and order, it counts nothing, and it identifies no one. Store Decode never reads a visitor’s name, email address or phone number.

The fine print, for the analyst

• An add to cart is matched to an add-to-cart click of the same visit and variant at most 10 seconds before it, each click used once. When several clicks qualify, the line reads “(several add-to-cart clicks within 10 s)”. The match is by time and variant: it says which control was clicked before the add, not that the click made the add.
• “No product-page click recorded” means a click could have been recorded and none matched: an app added the item, the quantity was changed in the cart, or the page view was not received.
• The Dead clicks tab reads “Among the latest 2,000 page views of the last 48 hours.” It lists visits with a dead click in those page views, not every one in 48 hours.
• Cart in this visit is drawn only from a whole visit: one shown alone, with no filters and fewer than 100 rows. Opening a visit loads nothing extra for it. A visit’s segments and cart never fill a step the visit’s own events did not show. The source logos are matched from the referring site or the link’s source tag only; an unknown source keeps its own name.
• A product with a single variant shows no variant row. A removal is never counted as an add.
• A search shows its term and “Products listed”, the products Shopify listed with the search, which can be fewer than the store’s total results. The term is lower-cased and cut to 60 characters. It is dropped when it holds an at sign or six or more digits in a row, and then reads “Not sent”.
• The paths in a record never hold the ids or codes from a visitor’s account page, order status, checkout, shared cart or invoice link. An account page keeps only its name (for example /account/orders); the others keep only their kind of page.
• Under each table a caption names where its facts come from: “Source: Shopify customer events”, “Your Shopify admin”, “Shopify page data”, “Seen on your store pages”, “Detected in your theme” or “Calculated by Store Decode”. The caption names where a fact was read, never how accurate it is.
• Don’t count my visits in Settings silences the storefront script in that browser only; Settings says what the pixel still sends from it.

Everything the script and pixel send is listed on what Store Decode collects.

See a sample observation card and the Activity card on the home page.