About sessions in the chatbot

In our reports, you can see sessions. If you have used Google Analytics, you have probably encountered sessions.

For Telegram bots, sessions are not typical because Telegram does not provide data on user views, and it is not possible to implement full sessions. However, we have decided that sessions are necessary for proper analytics.

Why are they needed?

Let's imagine you have a bot that helps learn the English language. You have tasks for users, a translator, and so on.

How can you understand how often users use the bot? How much time do they spend on visits? How many tasks or functions do they use during that time?

Sessions can help answer these questions. They are one of the tools that show user engagement. If users are using the bot more frequently and for longer periods, it means we are doing things right and our bot is useful to them.

How does it work?

A session is one user interaction. When a user interacts with the bot, the start of a session is recorded. If there is no interaction with the bot for 30 minutes, the session ends.

Example 1:

A user sends a command to the bot, sends a message after 10 minutes, and no more commands are received from them. The session will be closed 30 minutes after the last action. The user's session length will be 20 minutes and will include 2 actions.

Example 2:

A user sends a command to the bot, sends a message after 20 minutes, and sends another command to the bot after another 20 minutes.

The session will have a duration of 40 minutes and will include 3 actions.

Can one user have multiple sessions?

Yes, a user can have multiple sessions throughout the day, but they cannot have multiple sessions simultaneously.

Can there be any inaccuracies in session tracking?

Since we are dealing with a Telegram bot, we can only see the user's actions (button clicks, message sending, commands, etc.). If you have a "subscription" type bot, for example, where you periodically send the user some information (articles, announcements, etc.) that do not require user actions, we cannot learn anything about such users, and a session will not be initiated.

What reports are available?

Currently, we have the following reports:

1. Number of sessions
2. Average number of actions per session
3. Average session duration
4. UTM report - This report allows you to determine which traffic sources bring the most interested users. You can read more about UTM tags in this article

Sessions also appear in various other reports.