User journey tracking

Analytics counts the crowd.
A journey follows one person.

User journey tracking records each visitor’s path through your site as one timeline: the pages they opened, in what order, for how long, across every visit, and what they did at the end, such as signing up. Ordinary analytics adds everyone up instead. GA4 can show one user’s activity in User explorer, filed under a device ID; privacy-first tools such as Plausible, Fathom and Simple Analytics cannot, by design. Below: one visitor replayed through all three, which pages your converters read before they signed up, and the privacy rules that come with following people, Builderify User Journey included.

Replay a visitor Start free
GA4, Plausible, Fathom, Simple Analytics Docs checked 14 Oct 2026

By the Builderify team

01 The crowd 02 Same browser, four times 03 The thread 04 A person, and a signup

Illustration, not real data

01 / Totals vs journeys

User journey tracking vs analytics:
the crowd and the person.

Analytics aggregates. It counts sessions, page views and conversions, and splits them by page, source or country. That answers “how many” very well, and it is all most weeks need.

A journey keeps the order. It recognises a returning browser and lays its visits end to end, so you can read what one person did before they booked, bought or signed up. For a small business, that is most of what “customer journey analytics” means in practice: the pages a lead read before they got in touch.

Recognising someone is also what makes it personal data, which is why section 06 exists.

The questionWhat answers it

  • How many people came from Instagram this week?

    Any analytics tool, cookieless ones included.

    Totals

  • Which page do most visits start on?

    Entry pages, in every tool here.

    Totals

  • Where do people give up between pricing and booking?

    A funnel, if you already know the steps. Journeys show the steps you did not think to ask about.

    Funnel or journeys

  • What did the people who signed up read first?

    Needs each signup tied to the visits before it.

    Journeys

  • What did this lead do before they emailed me?

    Only a tool that knows them by name, or by an ID you can match.

    Journeys

  • Do people come back before they buy?

    Needs the same visitor recognised across days.

    Journeys
02 / Visitor timeline

One visitor, four visits,
three ways of seeing them.

A sample visitor to a pottery studio’s site: an Instagram post, a Google search two mornings later, a quick look at prices that night, and five days on, a signup. Drag through it or press play, and switch lenses to see what each kind of tool would show you about the same nine days.

Visitor timeline · riverclay.example
Signs up on a popup: Autumn taster list
SF
ana.r@example.com
Porto, Portugal · Safari · iOS
On site now Identified Returning First from Instagram
Visits
4
Pages viewed
9
Time on site
11m 42s
Outcome
Subscribed
Left their email on a module
Pages per day, last 30 days 3 active days
How they found you
Instagram
Landed on
Homepage /

Laid out like Builderify’s visitor page: the name turns into the email the moment they sign up.

The journey Newest first
Wed 14 Oct · 19:20 · Visit 4 Beginners’ wheel course+1 Beginners’ wheel course Google 3 pages · 4m 25s
  1. 1
    Beginners’ wheel course Entry
    /classes/beginners-wheel · 19:20
    2m 30s
  2. 2
    FAQ
    /faq · 19:22
    1m 05s
  3. 3
    Beginners’ wheel course Now
    /classes/beginners-wheel · 19:23
    50s
Fri 9 Oct · 21:37 · Visit 3 Pricing Bounced Direct 1 page · 9s
  1. 1
    Pricing Entry Exit
    /pricing · 21:37
    9s
Fri 9 Oct · 08:02 · Visit 2 Your first pottery class+1 Pricing Viewed pricing Google 3 pages · 4m 58s
  1. 1
    Your first pottery class Entry
    /blog/first-pottery-class · 08:02
    3m 05s
  2. 2
    Classes
    /classes · 08:05
    41s
  3. 3
    Pricing Exit Goal · Viewed pricing
    /pricing · 08:05
    1m 12s
Tue 6 Oct · 20:14 · Visit 1 Homepage Classes Instagram 2 pages · 2m 10s
  1. 1
    Homepage Entry
    / · 20:14
    22s
  2. 2
    Classes Exit
    /classes · 20:14
    1m 48s
Time on page Scroll depth
Users
1
Sessions
4
Engaged sessions
3
Bounce rate
25%
Views
9
Key events
1
Pages and screens: page pathViews
  • /classes2
  • /pricing2
  • /classes/beginners-wheel2
  • /1
  • /blog/first-pottery-class1
  • /faq1
Session default channel groupSessions
  • Organic Search2
  • Organic Social1
  • Direct1
Explore › User explorer Kept 2 or 14 months
1849204411.1791314040 4 sessions No name, no email
  1. Wed 14 Oct 19:20session_startpage_view × 3sign_up · key event
  2. Fri 9 Oct 21:37session_startpage_view × 1
  3. Fri 9 Oct 08:02session_startpage_view × 3
  4. Tue 6 Oct 20:14session_startpage_view × 2

The one place GA4 shows this visitor alone: an Exploration listing users by device ID (from the _ga cookie) or your own user ID. Google’s policies forbid sending it the email that would tell you who this is.

Unique visitors
3
Total visits
4
Pageviews
9
Bounce rate
25%
Visit duration
2m 56s
Goal: Signup
1
Top pagesPageviews
  • /classes2
  • /pricing2
  • /classes/beginners-wheel2
  • /1
  • /blog/first-pottery-class1
  • /faq1
Top sourcesVisits
  • Google2
  • Instagram1
  • Direct1
Who was it?

3 unique visitors, one person. A daily-hash tool gives the same browser a new identifier every day, so each day they came back counts again, and nothing joins the signup to the visits before it. That is the design, not a fault.

  1. ?Visitor 1
    Tue 6 Oct
  2. ?Visitor 2
    Fri 9 Oct
  3. ?Visitor 3
    Wed 14 Oct

Shows
Every page, in order, with time and scroll, and the signup on the page it happened.

Can’t show
Needs a cookie and consent where the law asks. Follows one browser, not a person across devices.

Shows
Exact totals, sources and key events, for as long as the reports exist.

Can’t show
Which rows are this visitor. User explorer gets close, under an ID with no name.

Shows
Honest totals with no cookie, and usually no banner.

Can’t show
That the four visits were one person, or what they read before signing up.

Illustration · A made-up visitor. GA4 counts an engaged session as one longer than 10 seconds, with a key event or with two or more page views, and its bounce rate is the share that were not engaged; the sign-up counts as a key event only if you send and mark one. The privacy-first counter works like Plausible and Fathom, with a daily identifier.

03 / GA4 User explorer

Can GA4 track individual users?
Yes, under a number.

GA4’s User explorer lets you “drill into individual user activities”. It is an Exploration, not a standard report: in GA4, open Explore, then the template gallery, and pick User explorer. It lists users, top 10 by sessions to start, and clicking one opens their activity.

Each row is a user as your reporting identity defines them: your own User-ID if you send one, otherwise the device ID, which on a website is the client ID kept in the _ga cookie. So a row reads 1849204411.1791314040, never a name. Google forbids sending it email addresses or anything else it could recognise as identifying, and says your User-ID must not contain information a third party could use to work out who someone is. Tying a row to a lead is a join you build and keep yourself.

Keeping GA4 in the EU or UK? Its cookies wait for consent there; the Consent Mode v2 guide covers the setup. Whether GA4 itself is lawful for you is its own question, answered in is Google Analytics legal?

User explorerFrom Google’s help pages
Top 10
Users shown by default, ranked by sessions. Filter or segment to find others. Device ID and stream name are the only dimensions it takes. Source
2 or 14 mo
How long user-level data stays for Explorations and funnel reports, your choice in Data retention. Standard reports are not affected. Source
No PII
“No data be passed to Google that Google could use or recognize as personally identifiable information”: no emails, names or phone numbers. Source
Thresholds
Google may withhold rows in a report or exploration that includes demographics, so no one can infer who a user is. You cannot adjust them. Source
If

You want to see what one person did, once in a while.

Then

User explorer will do, if the person is still inside your Exploration retention window and you can find their device ID. Searching by email is not possible, by design.

If

You want every signup tied to the pages before it.

Then

Send a User-ID when people log in or sign up, keep your own table matching IDs to people, and join the two yourself. That is a developer job, and the ID still may not be the email.

If

You want the page-by-page story to be the everyday view.

Then

Use a tool that is built around it: Matomo’s visitor profiles, or a journey tool such as Builderify’s. Keep GA4 alongside for Google Ads if you buy ads.

04 / Privacy-first tools

Why Plausible, Fathom and Simple Analytics
can’t show one visitor.

Because they promise not to. Each one avoids keeping anything that would recognise a browser tomorrow, and that is what lets them run without cookies. A journey needs exactly that recognition, so these tools cannot draw one. It is the trade they offer, in their own words.

Plausible

“We do not track people across devices, websites or apps.” Its daily identifier “does not let us recognize the same visitor across days”. The salt behind it is deleted every 24 hours.

Its Business plan maps the paths visitors take, as counts and percentages: the crowd’s routes, not a person’s.

Data policy
Fathom

A SHA-256 visitor signature from the IP, browser, site and a salt that “rotates at midnight UTC”, “rather than creating an identifier intended to follow someone indefinitely”.

So a visitor is the same visitor for one UTC day at most. Events and revenue are reported as totals.

How Fathom handles data
Simple Analytics

Counts “unique pageviews, not individual people tracked across sessions.” Uniqueness comes from the referrer, and it sets no cookies and keeps no IP.

There is no identifier at all, not even a daily one, so there is nothing that could link two visits.

Unique visits explained

The sample visitor, as each kind of tool counts them

4 visits · 9 days · one browser
GA4
1user

One _ga cookie for two years, as long as they accept it and keep the same browser.

Plausible, Fathom
3visitors

A new identifier every day the salt changes, so each of the 3 days they came counts again.

Simple Analytics
4unique visits

Every arrival from outside the site counts as unique, decided by the referrer.

A journey
1visitor

One browser, one timeline, 4 visits on it.

If you only need the totals, the privacy-first tools are the calmer choice, and often need no banner. The Simple Analytics alternative guide covers when a tally stops being enough; all of them are compared in the guide to Google Analytics alternatives.

05 / What converters read

See what a visitor did before signing up,
then what they all did.

One journey is a story. A handful, set side by side, is evidence: the pages people read before signing up, against the pages read by people who left. Six sample visitors below; tick them in and out, or look only at the visit they signed up in.

Which pages do converters read? Sample data
Visitors
For the people who signed up, count
What stands out

Beginners’ wheel course stands out: read by 100% of the people who signed up and 0% of those who did not.

3 signed up · 3 did not

Pages read by visitors who signed up and by visitors who did not, with the difference and the average time per converter
Page Read by Signed up Did not Gap Time each
Beginners’ wheel course/classes/beginners-wheel 100% 0% +100 2m 40s
FAQ/faq 100% 0% +100 1m 10s
Your first pottery class/blog/first-pottery-class 67% 33% +34 3m 38s
Homepage/ 67% 67% 0 19s
Pricing/pricing 67% 67% 0 1m 11s
Classes/classes 33% 33% 0 2m 29s
Gift cards/gift-cards 0% 33% -33 —
Signed up Did not Gap: percentage points

Six visitors prove nothing; the method is the point. A page every converter read and nobody else did is a page to put in front of more people, not proof that it caused the signups. Run it again on a month of real journeys before you redesign anything.

01

Read the pages that convert

If every signup read the FAQ, link it from the pages people leave from, and answer its questions higher up the page that sells.

02

Spot the drop-off

Exit pages in a journey are where someone gave up. Three people leaving from pricing in one week is a pricing page to rewrite, not a traffic problem.

03

Follow up with context

A lead who read the beginners’ course twice wants that, not your newsletter. Shape the first emails around it: the welcome email sequence guide has the order.

04

Check who a campaign sent

A spike of one-page visits from one source is worth a look before you pay for more. The bot traffic guide shows how to tell people from data centres.

Want the clicks inside a page too, such as which button they pressed? That is a goal on a click: how to track button clicks.

06 / The privacy side

Is user journey tracking legal?
Usually, with consent and restraint.

A journey is personal data even before anyone signs up: it singles out one browser, with its IP address, approximate location and device. Under the GDPR and UK GDPR that is fine to hold, on the right terms. Here they are, plainly. This is not legal advice; for your own site, read the guidance linked or ask whoever advises you.

  1. 01

    It is personal data

    The GDPR names “internet protocol addresses, cookie identifiers” as online identifiers (Recital 30). The ICO says what matters is whether you can “distinguish an individual from other individuals”, “regardless of whether it is possible to link the ‘online’ identity with a ‘real world’ named individual”. The EDPB lists location data and browsing history as personal data.

    ICO: identifiers
  2. 02

    Ask first in the EU and UK

    Storing a visitor ID on the device falls under the ePrivacy rules (PECR in the UK), and tracking individuals is outside the UK’s statistics exception: “The statistical purposes exception does not allow you to monitor or track individual visitors to your service.” In practice: consent, through a banner that really blocks until people choose.

    ICO: the exceptions
  3. 03

    Say so in your privacy policy

    People must be told your purposes, “your retention periods for that personal data, and who it will be shared with”, at the time you collect it. Name the tool, what it records (pages, time, scroll, IP, location, device) and that a signup is linked to the visits before it.

    ICO: right to be informed
  4. 04

    Keep it short

    You rarely need last spring’s journeys; you need this month’s. Pick the shortest retention that answers your questions, and keep the long view in aggregate reports instead.

  5. 05

    Don’t unmask the anonymous

    A visitor who never signed up stays a label. Don’t look up IP addresses, match them against other lists or try to work out who someone is. The journey becomes a name only when they hand you one.

  6. 06

    Honour requests

    Someone can ask what you hold or ask you to delete it. Know where their journey lives and how to remove it, and switch off tracking for anyone who withdraws consent.

    EDPB: the basics
In Builderify

The switches for each rule

  • Wait for cookie consent. Nothing is recorded until the visitor allows Analytics in the cookie banner; if they change their mind, tracking stops and the visitor ID is erased from their browser. Off by default: switch it on.
  • Keep data for 7, 14 or 30 days. Older visitors, visits and pages are deleted automatically every night.
  • Respect Do Not Track. On by default: browsers that send it are skipped.
  • Delete visitor. One button on the visitor’s page removes their profile and every page they visited.
07 / With Builderify

User journey tracking
that ends in a name.

User Journey gives every visitor a readable label such as “Swift Falcon” and a page of their own: a one-line summary, where they are (city and country from the IP), their device, browser and system, the source they first came from, and each visit as a timeline of pages, with the time spent and how far they scrolled on each, entry and exit marked. A 30-day strip shows which days they came, and visitors seen in the last five minutes show as on site now.

When they leave their email in a Builderify popup, form, quiz, booking, chat or any other module that collects it, the signup is written onto the page they were on, with the module it came from, and the label turns into their email. The lead itself lands in your lead lists, where a welcome sequence can pick it up.

Popup form sent
Carries the visitor ID
Pinned to the page
Label becomes the email

What it records

  • Every page, in order, per visit; a visit ends after 30 minutes without activity
  • Time on each page while the tab is in view, scroll depth and clicks
  • Goals reached on the way: a page, click, form, scroll, time or custom event
  • Signups from any Builderify module, on the page they happened
  • Your own form? builderify('track', 'email', …) names the visitor
  • People, VPN or proxy users and data-centre traffic shown apart

Know this first

  • It follows a browser, not a person: a phone and a laptop are two visitors, and clearing cookies and site data starts a new one
  • It sets first-party cookies (a visitor ID for 400 days, the visit for 30 minutes), so it needs consent where the law asks
  • Sources come from the referrer alone; UTM tags are not read, and email links often arrive as Direct
  • Journeys are kept 7, 14 or 30 days at most: no year-on-year view
  • No session recordings or heatmaps
2,000 new visitors, 2.5 pages eachCredits
Journeys (2,000 × 0.1)200
Page loads (5,000 → 10 per 1,000)50
Free every month−250
Credits to buy0

A visitor is charged once, the first time Journey sees them; returning visitors cost only their page loads. Each new lead a module captures is 1 credit. Past the free credits, one-time packs that never expire: see pricing.

Start free

More on analytics

Questions

User journey tracking, before you ask.

User journey tracking records each visitor's path through your website as one timeline: the pages they opened, in what order, for how long and across every visit, and what they did at the end, such as signing up or booking. Ordinary analytics adds everyone up into totals instead. A journey needs the tool to recognise a returning browser, usually with a cookie, which is why it counts as personal data.

Yes, through User explorer, an Exploration you open from Explore and the template gallery. Each row is a user identified by your own User-ID or the device ID from the _ga cookie, and you can drill into one user's activity. Google forbids sending emails or names, so a row never tells you who someone is, and Explorations only keep user-level data for 2 or 14 months.

You need a tool that ties the signup to the visits before it. In Builderify User Journey, a signup from a Builderify popup, form, quiz, booking or chat is written onto the page of the visit it happened on, and the visitor's label becomes their email, so their whole timeline is there. In GA4 you would send a User-ID at signup and join it to your own records yourself.

Usually, if you do it openly. A journey uses online identifiers such as cookie IDs and IP addresses, which are personal data, and the UK ICO says its statistics exception does not allow you to track individual visitors, so in the EU and UK ask for consent first. Say what you record in your privacy policy, keep journeys for as short a time as you can, and do not try to identify people who never signed up. This is not legal advice.

Because they are built not to. Plausible uses a daily identifier whose salt is deleted every 24 hours and says it does not recognise the same visitor across days, Fathom's salt rotates at midnight UTC, and Simple Analytics keeps no identifier at all. That is what lets them run without cookies, and it means they report totals, not one person's path.

Sources

Read on 14 October 2026.

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