A visit is one open of a published Experience. Somebody holds a phone to a Marker, scans the code, or follows a link, your page renders, and one row goes into the visit log with the time, the source, the Marker it came from and the kind of device.
That is the whole definition. It is deliberately literal, and the consequences are worth knowing before you read anything else.
A visit is not a person
Two opens by the same visitor in the same afternoon are two visits. A guest who reopens your page at dinner to check the closing time adds a third. The ⓘ beside the Visits tile on Stats says so in as many words: "Each time one of your Experiences is opened: a Marker tap, a QR scan or a link. The same person coming back counts again."
The same ⓘ adds the other half: "Visits count every open, whoever it was. People count each person once." The count of people lives on Audience, under People met. If Visits is 400 and People met is 90, nothing has gone wrong: your regulars are opening the page more than once, which is usually the best news on the page.
What a tap does
A phone touches the Marker
Or the camera reads its QR code. No app, no account, nothing to install.
The Marker's own address opens
/m/{marker}?src=nfc
This never changes. It is printed into the chip and the code at the factory.
NearField looks up what it points at
This is the part you control, and the part you can change at any time.
Your Experience renders
/view/{experience}
Counted as a visit, with the tap or scan recorded against that Marker.
Where a visit came from
Every visit is filed under one of four sources. How people found you on Stats draws them as one bar, with the count for each written beside it. Builder QR only appears once someone has scanned one.
- NFC tap
- A phone held against the Marker. On a Marker link, the absence of a source label is itself the NFC signal, and anything unrecognised resolves to NFC too, so a tap is the default reading of a Marker visit.
- QR scan
- The camera read one of your Markers' QR codes, usually the one printed on the Marker. Its address carries an explicit
qrlabel and the Marker's own code, so the scan is credited to that Marker. - Builder QR
- The camera read the QR you download from the launch screen after publishing, or any other code made for the Experience itself rather than for a Marker. It carries the
qrlabel but no Marker, which is how it is told apart. The ⓘ: "Builder QR: someone scanned the QR code you get when you publish." - Link
- Everything else: a link you copied, an email, a button on your own website, a post. The Copy link button writes a
directlink on purpose, so sharing a link never inflates your scan numbers.
The two things counted after the visit
Once your page is open, NearField writes to two separate logs, and knowing which is which explains almost every question people ask about Stats.
| Log | Written for | Read by |
|---|---|---|
| Aggregate events | Every visitor, known or not: Action taps, block interactions, Inclusion Bar use | The Actions tile and the Actions card on Stats and each Experience report, the Inclusion Bar cards, and the Actions count on Audience |
| Visitor events | Only visitors who have a profile, which needs Functional consent | Audience: the timeline, the moments feed, People, and each visitor's drawer |
Answers are narrower still. The ⓘ on the tile: "Replies to your questions: names, ratings, choices and anything typed in. One person answering three questions is three answers." An Action tap is engagement, not an answer, and it is counted separately on purpose.
What is never counted
- Anything inside an embed. Video, maps, forms and social posts run in a frame served by another site, which cannot report a play or a submit back to us. Those blocks are counted in visits only.
- A tap that never opened a page. If a phone does not read the Marker, nothing reaches NearField. There is no record of a failed tap to look at.
- Activity before consent. A visitor who has not granted Functional consent still appears in your Stats totals, but never gets a profile, so they are invisible on the Audience timeline. In the words of the People met ⓘ: "People who decline to be remembered still count as visits, but not as people."
- Draft Experiences. Nothing is counted until you publish.
Example
Cedar Hollow Zoo & Aquarium, one otter habitat
A family stops at the habitat. A parent taps the Marker and the page opens: one visit, source NFC, Marker credited. The child asks to see it too, so they scan the printed code on their own phone: a second visit, source QR, same Marker.
The child answers "Which animal was your favourite?": one answer, one visitor event. The parent taps Directions to the café: one Action tap in the aggregate log, and, because their phone has a profile, one visitor event too.
Stats for the day: Visits 2, From a Marker 100%, Actions 1, Answers 1. Audience: 2 people met, and both of them count as Engaged: one answered a question, the other took an Action, and neither said who they are.
Do my own visits count?
Yes. There is no filter that excludes you, so a page you open twenty times while building shows up as twenty visits. Check a draft in the builder preview instead, and read your numbers from the day after you publish.
Why is the Actions tile higher than the Action rows on my timeline?
The tile counts every tap by everyone. The timeline can only show taps by visitors who have a profile. On a page most people meet once and leave, the gap between the two is normal and often large.
Does a visitor reloading the page count twice?
Yes, each open is a visit. If you want a count of people rather than opens, use People met on Audience.
Do QR scans and NFC taps count differently?
They count the same. The only difference is the source label, which is there so you can see which half of the Marker people actually use.