kapa.ai how would I calculate the average number of sessions a users had prior to conversion?
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You can get close to this, but the docs don’t describe a single built‑in metric that directly returns “average number of sessions before conversion” per user. You’ll need to combine Sessions + Funnels/Insights, and the exact step‑by‑step isn’t fully spelled out in the sources, so the workflow below is partially inferred.From the docs, you have: - Sessions are exposed as virtual events Session Start / Session End, with properties like Session Duration (seconds) and Session Event Count that you can use in Funnels and Insights.[Sessions overview]
- Funnels can be measured by Sessions instead of Uniques/Totals, which constrains the conversion window to a single session and lets you reason about “sessions that lead to a key action.”[Funnels + Sessions]
- In Insights, you can:
- Count Total Sessions (by using Session Start and the Sessions measurement).[Sessions in Insights]
- Use Aggregate Property per User and Frequency per User to compute per‑user metrics and then aggregate them (avg, distribution, etc.).[Measurements]Given that, a practical approach is: 1. Define your conversion event
Decide what “conversion” is (e.g. Purchase Completed).2. Build a cohort of converters
- Create a cohort of users who have done the conversion event in your desired time range.3. Estimate sessions per user before conversion (workaround)
Because the docs don’t show a way to slice “sessions strictly before first conversion” as a built‑in filter, you’ll likely approximate by looking at all sessions for converters over a pre‑conversion window (e.g. last 30 days before conversion) or a fixed lookback window. One way, using Insights: 1. In Insights, select the Session Start event.
2. Set Measurement to Frequency per User or Count Sessions (Sessions aggregation) to get sessions per user.[Sessions in Insights]
3. Filter to your converters cohort so you’re only looking at users who eventually converted.
4. Set the date range to the period you consider “prior to conversion” (e.g. 30 days before they converted; this part is conceptual, the docs don’t show a relative‑to‑conversion window control).
5. Use the default aggregation (Average) to get the average number of sessions per user in that window.[Measurements] This gives you: “On average, converters had X sessions in the chosen window (intended to be pre‑conversion).”4. If you want session‑level conversion behavior instead
In Funnels, you can:
- Build a funnel like Session Start → Conversion Event.
- Set Counting Method to Sessions so each session is one attempt.[Funnels + Sessions] This will tell you what % of sessions end in conversion, but not directly “how many sessions a user had before their first conversion.”---Because the docs don’t explicitly describe a “sessions before first conversion” metric or filter, any exact implementation will require some project‑specific setup (cohorts, relative windows, or additional properties). The closest out‑of‑the‑box is using Sessions in Insights with Frequency per User or Count Sessions on a converters cohort over a chosen pre‑conversion window.
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