Sessions

A session represents a continuous period of user activity on your site. Sessions are the foundation for engagement metrics like bounce rate, session duration, and pages per session.

What Is a Session

A session begins when a user first interacts with your site and ends after 30 minutes of inactivity. If the user returns after the timeout has elapsed, a new session is created. Sessions group related events together so you can understand user journeys as cohesive visits rather than isolated actions.

Session Lifecycle

Start

A session starts when:

• A user loads your site for the first time
• A user returns after the session timeout has elapsed (default: 30 minutes)
• reset() is called, which forces a new session

When a session starts, the SDK sends a session_start event to the __analytics channel with referrer, UTM parameters, and device information.

Active

While the session is active, any user interaction (page view, click, custom event) resets the inactivity timer. The session remains open as long as the user continues interacting within the timeout window.

End

A session ends after 30 minutes with no user activity. There is no explicit "session end" event -- the server determines session boundaries based on the time gap between events.

Session Data

Each session contains the following data points:

Field	Description
Session ID	A unique UUID identifying the session
Start time	Timestamp of the first event in the session
End time	Timestamp of the last activity in the session
Duration	Time between the first and last event
Event count	Total number of events recorded during the session
User ID	The identified user (if identify() was called during the session)
Browser	Browser name and version
OS	Operating system name and version
Device type	Desktop, mobile, or tablet
Country	Country resolved from IP geolocation
Region	Region or state
City	City
Pages visited	List of page paths viewed during the session

Session Analytics

The Sessions page in the dashboard lets you explore sessions across your user base.

Session List

View all sessions with filtering options:

Filter	Description
Date range	Select a time window
Environment	Separate production from staging or development
Country	Filter by geographic location
Browser	Filter by browser name
Device type	Filter by desktop, mobile, or tablet
User	Search sessions by user ID

Session Detail

Click on any session to drill into its event timeline. The detail view shows every event that occurred during the session in chronological order, including:

• Event name and channel
• Timestamp
• Tags and metadata
• Page path

Session Metrics

Metric	Description
Session duration distribution	Histogram showing how long sessions typically last
Events per session	Average number of events across sessions
Pages per session	Average number of distinct pages viewed

Bounce Rate

A "bounced" session is one where the user viewed only a single page before leaving. Bounce rate measures the percentage of these single-page sessions.

Bounce Rate = (Bounced Sessions / Total Sessions) x 100

A high bounce rate may indicate that users are not finding what they expect, or it may be normal for content like blog posts where a single page satisfies the visit. Interpret bounce rate in the context of your site's purpose.

Session Management in the SDK

The SDK provides methods to inspect and control sessions programmatically.

Get Session Info

const session = kitbase.getSession();
// => {
//   id: 'sess_abc123',
//   startedAt: 1705321800000,
//   lastActivityAt: 1705323600000
// }

Get Session ID

const sessionId = kitbase.getSessionId();
// => 'sess_abc123'

Force a New Session

kitbase.reset();
// Ends the current session and starts a new one
// Also clears the user ID (if set via identify)