Views: everything you need to know

[Max]

Hello guys

We see that our article Views: everything you need to know has low happiness score:

It makes us worry when our customers are unhappy. If you could provide us with the details on what went wrong, we would be very grateful

Please do not hesitate to share your ideas. Your feedback is crucial for our development.

Just in case, we’ve decided to answer the most popular questions about views in this topic.

What are views?

The number of views is defined by the number of times the widget’s installation code loads on your website = the number of requests made to our server.

Why is there a limit?

We decided not to restrict any of the widgets’ features and settings for any of our customers even those who use the free Lite plan. We have done it specifically in order to let our customers test the widgets’ functionality in full before taking the decision about upgrading to a paid plan.

Also, the views were chosen as the main metrics on our service because each view produces a load on our servers. So we find it fair enough as the views limit is one of the main differences between the plans.

Where to check views statistics?

You can easily check your views usage in your Elfsight account. Here’s an article describing how to do it in detail - Checking your views statistics

So you just need to go to the Applications section and choose the app that you need.
Here you can see your total views count for the current period (1) and Usage Statistic by sites (2):

Also, here you can find some general information about our views metrics - Views: everything you need to know

Refreshment date

You can find the refreshment date in your Elfsight account.

Go to the “Applications” section, choose the app that you need, and click “Manage”:

You’ll see the refreshment date in the upper right corner:

Why is the widget deactivated?

The widget becomes deactivated if your views limit is over.

Views expired, what next?

When your views limit is over, the widget on your website will be deactivated. So, the widget will not be visible to your website visitors until next reset date.
Before your views limit runs out, you will get several notification emails from Elfsight Apps, so deactivation won’t come as a surprise.

When the deactivation happens, you can either:

• wait for your next views reset date - the views are reset every month
• or upgrade your subscription plan

Why my views gone too fast?

We’d like to remind you that views are counted by the number of widget loadings on your website. Here’s an article that will explain more - Views: everything you need to know

Basically, these are the reasons that affect the speed at which the views limit might run out faster:

• Installation - if the widget is installed to the website’s theme or template, it will be automatically displayed on each page, so it will get more views.
• Owner’s views - stay logged in to your Elfsight account to prevent your own views from being counted. Please make sure you’re logged in to Elfsight from the same browser and device you’re working with your website.

Why views statistics is different from Google Analytics or any other tools?

First of all, we recommend you to check our article describing possible reasons that may affect the speed of views counting - Why my views have gone so fast.

• Google Analytics and other tools count views differently than us, that’s why there will be incoherence between their statistics and Elfsight’s one.
• The other thing you need to know is that our statistics counts views of website scrapers, which also may cause the difference. However, we do have plans to change this behavior in the future.

If you’re still certain that there’s a huge divergence, please send us your pageviews statistics. We’ll try our best to find out what’s happening there.

If you have any questions about views, please let me know and I’ll be happy to shed some light on it

[user2361]

If there are 21 widgets on the site, and the viewer looks at just one page with a widget, are you telling me that it counts for 21 view???

Are you telling me that even if the consumer doesn’t even open the player widget, if it is on the page, it will still count? And it will count for 21 if there are 21 widgets on the sight?

So if I have 21 audio player widgets on site, and my a viewer is looking around at all the different pages, do the views keep multiplying by the number of pages the viewer clicked on? So 21 widgets x 9 pages that he clicked on? Is that how it works?

[Max]

Hello @user2361 and welcome to Elfsight Community

I see that my colleague Ksenia has already contacted you. As Ksenia said, if you have 21 Audio Player widgets on different pages, and a website visitors open a page with only 1 widget, it will count as 1 view. However, if they open all 21 pages with the widgets at once, it will count as 21 views.

I see that the phrase “at once” confused you. Please let me elaborate on it a bit.

If you open several pages (for example 14, as you’ve mentioned) not at once, it still will be counted as 14 views. The number of views is defined by the number of times the widget’s installation code loads on your website. So, every time when the webpage with the widget is loaded, it is counted as a view

I hope this explains things.

If any other questions come up, please do not hesitate to contact me or Ksenia. We’ll be delighted to help

[Rebecca3 (Rebecca)]

On March 8, 2023, on Facebook, you asked users why this article gets such a poor rating. In my opinion that may be because people are unhappy with your definition of views and they’re giving a thumbs down not because they don’t understand the answer but because they don’t LIKE the answer.

For me, it’s very confusing article. You talk about unique users, “Such a unique user is counted only once no matter how many times they visit the site over a specified time period, and is also calculated by the IP address used to access a website.” This leads people to believe that if someone clicks on a page with a widget, goes back a page, goes to that widget’s page again, refreshes the page twice, all within one minute, that it will still count for only one view for that widget.

But then you say in the “How does views limit work” section, no, this is not the case, it counts for four (the original, the second and the two refreshes).

If you are tracking IP addresses and calling each one a unique user and the time frame (not actually listed in the article, which may also add to the consfusion) is say 5 minutes, then that user, who is browsing around the website, popping on and off a page with a widget several times, should be counted as one view.

I suspect people are upset about your definition of Views and the perhaps the confusion about defining a unique user but then counting every time they hit the widget.

[Max]

Hello @Rebecca3! We are so happy to see you here! Welcome to Community

Firstly, thank you so much for taking the time to share your feedback! We really appreciate it.

I agree, that the views system may be quite complicated for understanding. So, I’ll be happy to elaborate on it for you

Views is Elfsight major metric. The number of views is defined by the number of times the widget’s installation code loads on your website = the number of requests made to our server.

As for the unique user, our article tells that all the limits are set in views. So, we don’t count unique users:

After that, we just give an explanation of what a unique user is.

I hope this explains things.

If you have any other questions or any additional feedback, please feel free to let us know.

We’ll be more than happy to advise

[Rebecca3 (Rebecca)]

I was just offering an answer to a question you asked on Facebook, to paraphrase, why do most people find your answer to a question about Views to be so unhelpful. I didn’t really need an answer. You asked. I commented.

But thank you anyway.

Becky Miller
President 18b The Las Vegas Arts District
Main Street Mercantile 1235 S Main Street
(702) 592-0929

[Helga]

@Rebecca3 Rebecca, actually you are right, and I must say that your feedback was extremely useful, thank you very much for your time and a huge help!

I guess our article really was not clear enough, and we made it too complicated when we started talking about what we can count and what we cannot count.

It was awesome to see things from our users’ perspective, so your comment did help us big time. We’ll make sure to correct our article shortly to make it more digestible and simple.

Again, thanks a million for your support and suggestions, it means a lot!