The web application tracks users who access your web pages. This is done by using Monthly Unique Visitor (MUV) as a metric. A monthly unique visitor is an individual user who visits your site and web pages within a 30-day period.


Let’s say a visitor lands on your website and is added to an experiment, say A/B testing. The web application counts this visitor as a Unique Visitor and your consumption will be calculated accordingly. Now, if this visitor enters another experiment, they will still be counted as a single unique visitor and only 1 MUV will be deducted from the monthly quota. 

 

How does this differ from the earlier calculation of experiments on Freshmarketer?

Earlier, MUV calculation was handled at an experiment level. This meant that every experiment consumed one unit from the quota every time a visitor was added to it. This meant that a visitor added to say 3 experiments would consume 3 units from the monthly quota. This is no longer the case. The web application has now moved from an “experiment-based MUV” to an “account-based MUV”. 

Calculating usage of MUVs

The web application bills your account based on the number of MUVs who enter an experiment on your site. So, if you have purchased 25000 MUVs for a given month, then your usage will be counted based on the number of visitors that landed on your website for that period. 

 

This means that the visitor (an individual) can visit your website any number of times in the same month, but you will still be billed for 1 visit.

 

When the limit is reached, any further website visit will not be tracked. You will have to extend your MUV limit to accommodate for additional traffic to your website.

MUV quota calculation: Old Vs New


Here’re a few examples to showcase the difference in calculation of the MUV count between Freshmarketer’s old logic and the new logic adopted by Freshmarketer Classic and the web application.


Example 1: Let’s assume you are running 3 A/B testing experiments on your website. Here’s how the MUV consumption would be calculated:

  • As per old logic: Every time a visitor enters an experiment, a visit will be consumed. So, if your website has 20000 visitors and each visitor passed through all 3 experiments, here’s the total consumption:


20000 x 3 (A/B Experiments) = 60000

  • As per new logic: The consumption will only be per visitor. This means, no matter how many times a visitor enters an experiment, only 1 visit will be consumed overall. So, if your website has 20000 visitors and each visitor passed through all three experiments, here’s the total consumption:


20000 X 1 = 20000

Example 2: Let’s assume you are running 2 A/B testing experiments  and 1 funnel experiment on your website. Here’s how the MUV consumption would be calculated:

  • As per old logic: Every time a visitor enters an experiment, a visit will be consumed. So, if your website has 20000 visitors and each visitor passed through all 3 experiments, here’s the total consumption:

20000 X 2 (A/B Experiments) + 20000 X 1 (Funnel Experiment) = 60000

  • As per new logic: The consumption will only be per visitor. This means, no matter how many times a visitor enters an experiment, only 1 visit will be consumed overall. So, if your website has 20000 visitors and each visitor passed through all three experiments, here’s the total consumption:

20000 X 1 = 20000


Note: For Session Replay, the calculation is done 1 MUV per session per visitor. The duration of a session is limited to 30 minutes. If the user's session exceeds 30 minutes, it will be considered as a new session.


This means when session replay experiments are carried out, every session consumes a single visit from the quota. Let us understand this better through an example.


Example 3: Let’s assume you are running 1 session replay experiment on your website. If 2000 visitors spent a collective time of 1 hour each on your website, then the total number of visits would be calculated as:

2000 x 2 (30 minute sessions) = 4000 

How long is the data retained in the web application?

As long as you have an active account, the data collected from experiments will be retained on our servers for 90 days. This is collected via cookies that run on the website. However, the web application is GDPR-compliant and will delete all user and visitor data within 30 days once the subscription is canceled.