Users versus Unique Visitors

You may see that the unique visitors metric is higher than the number of users on your intranet. How does that make sense? Shouldn't the unique visitor number be less than the number of users you have?

Here's the difference between the two metrics explained:

Users

For users, ThoughtFarmer Analytics looks at the TF user name for each visitor, no matter what device or browser the user is visiting from. All visits will be tied to the same user name, hence a more appropriate active user count. 

Unique Visitors

Unique visitors, on the other hand, are determined using first-party cookies stored in your visitor's browser. When the same person visits your website using two different devices (for example, their laptop and their mobile phone) then ThoughtFarmer Analytics will detect two unique visitors.

If the visitor’s browser does not accept the Analytics cookie (if they have disabled, blocked or deleted cookies), a simple rule of thumb is used to try to match the visitor to a previous visitor with the same features (IP, resolution, browser, plugins, OS, etc).

The two metrics above have a similar purpose but may show different numbers due to how they work.

To learn more, read the Matomo unique user definition heading on Understanding ThoughtFarmer Analytics.