Choosing when to use Live View

Live View shows visitors on your store in real time. It answers questions about right now, which is a small set of questions. This guide covers when it is worth watching and when your figures are better read later.

When Live View helps

• Campaign launches: watch an email or an advert land. You see visitors arrive in the minutes after you send, and whether they reach checkout.
• Sales and product drops: see demand as the sale opens, and which products people go to first.
• Checking a fix: after a change to checkout or a product page, watch real visitors go through it before you call it done.
• Spotting a problem: no visitors at a normally busy hour is a warning worth acting on.
• Knowing where demand is: Top Countries and Active Pages show where your visitors are and what they are looking at.

When to use Reports instead

Watching at a quiet hour changes nothing and takes time you could spend on the store. The same activity, read tomorrow as a report, is calmer and no less true. Use Running and exporting a report when you want to compare periods, track a trend, or find your best sellers. Live View is for moments, not for day to day monitoring.

Get the most from it

• Pair it with a launch checklist: send the email, open Live View, wait for the first order, then close it.
• Click Pause before you read the activity feed, so lines stop moving while you look.
• If the page shows a Demo data badge, no tracking feed is connected and the activity below is made up.

Related guides

• Using Live View
• Running and exporting a report
• Reading the dashboard metric cards