Chartbeat FAQs

• Learn about chartbeat
• Setting up chartbeat
• Understanding your data
• Other common questions
• Technical documentation

Learn about chartbeat

How does chartbeat work?

After you install chartbeat on your site, your users will begin pinging chartbeat every 15 seconds. The ping acts as their heartbeat, and tells us who is on a page and what they are up to (Are they reading your content, or do they just have it open in a tab?). See this blog post to learn more.

Will it slow down my site?

Absolutely not. The chartbeat ping happens silently and in the background (asynchronously). This means that the code that waits for your content to load before doing anything and is extremely lightweight even after that. It has no impact on your page load time or the browsing experience of your visitors. Learn more here.

How many websites can I install chartbeat on?

Chartbeat's cheapest plan at $9.95/month enables you to install chartbeat on five websites. You can purchase additional domains as described on our plans and pricing page. If you already have an account, change your settings on your plans page.

Do you cap the number of page views allowed? Is my site too big for chartbeat?

Chartbeat is used on some of the largest sites on the web and we have tested the system up to hundreds of thousands of simultaneous users. However, our $9.95 plan caps the amount of traffic it will show to 1,000 concurrent users. If your site has more than 1,000 users online at a single point in time, the dashboard will only reflect 1,000.

If you are hitting the 1,000 limit and want to see all your traffic, you can purchase additional domains as described on our plans and pricing page. If you already have an account, change your settings on your plans page. Then e-email us and we'll set up your new limits.

How much does chartbeat cost?

Chartbeat is completely free to try for 30 days. If you cancel within 30 days of signing up, you will not be charged. After that, chartbeat costs from $9.95/month, depending on the plan you chose, and can be cancelled at any time in two clicks.

How do I cancel?

Cancelling is simple and easy. Just log in and go to http://chartbeat.com/cancel or click on the Cancel link at the bottom of your dashboard.

What changes do I have to make to my site?

We give you a few lines of code to copy and paste into your site, and your dashboard becomes available right away. Plugins and instructions are also available for some common platforms like Typepad, Wordpress and Drupal.

Do you support HTTPS sites?

Yes, HTTPS is supported. The code from http://chartbeat.com/code will automatically adapt to being on an SSL website.

Where can I get answers to my other questions?

You can email us at We love to hear from you, and we strive to respond in less than 1 business day.

Setting up chartbeat

How can I install chartbeat on my content management system or hosting provider?

Chartbeat has two code snippets that need to be pasted in. You can find them at http://chartbeat.com/code or by clicking on the 'Add New Site' Button on your Dashboard.

The first snippet should be pasted in just before the </head> tag on each page that you are planning to track.

The second, larger code snippet should be copy and pasted into the bottom of your content, immediately before the </body> tag of each page you are planning to track. If you use a common include or template, you can enter it there.

If you use Wordpress, you can install our plugin by searching for it on the Plugins tab of your Settings. We're sorry, but you cannot yet add chartbeat to wordpress.com blogs.

You can read more about the code in our Technical Documentation.

Why do you say you have not received any pings from my site?

There are a few common reasons for this:

• Are you trying to put the code on a subdomain? If you are using chartbeat on a subdomain, you need to make sure you type in the full subdomain instead of just the domain when you generate the code. For example, type in blog.nytimes.com instead of nytimes.com.
• Did you press the Activate button on http://chartbeat.com/code after pasting in the code on your site? This is the third step in making sure your site shows up in the Dashboard.
• Is the code we gave you actually in your site? Double-check by using "View source" in your browser.
• Have you made an error while copying and pasting? Please make sure that nothing has gotten split between two lines and that nothing extra has been introduced. (This can sometimes happen if you email the code to somebody)
• Is there an unrelated Javascript error? If there is an error in your browser's Javascript console, this may be preventing our very-conservative loading process from starting. Try to fix the error or contact us for alternative loading code.
• Make sure you have visited your site since correcting the code.

If you're still having issues, send us email.

Why does my dashboard say awaiting data?

The dashboard may take a minute or two to collect needed statistics before it first works, after which you may need to reload. However, the most common cause of this problem is that there is nobody on your site. Remember that the dashboard only shows who is on your site right now.

Understanding your data

Hey! Why don't these numbers match my Google Analytics numbers?

Please see this blog post to learn more.

Active Visits

The active visits module shows the number of simultaneous users currently on your site. This isn’t an average or a count of cumulative page views; this is every single browser tab open to your site at this second. This number updates every few seconds to reflect people entering and exiting the page.

New and Returning Visitors

We classify your visitors as "new" or "returning" based on their past visits to your site. If they've visited at least once in the past 30 days they’re placed in the “returning” group if they haven't been on your site before they’re considered "new."

Engagement

Because we're checking in on your visitors every few seconds, we're able to see what they're actually doing on the page. Based on their activity we categorize them as "reading", "writing", or "idle".

Reading: we classify a visitor as reading if they’re pressing the arrow keys, scrolling up and down the page, or moving their mouse.

Writing: If your users are leaving a comment, searching for something, or entering any form of text on your page, they’re considered to be writing.

Idle: If a user hasn't taken any action on your page in some time, we call them idle. Odds are, your page is open in a tab while they focus on something else.

Reading and writing are only counted when they're actively looking at your page. If a user has you in a tab and is typing an email we won't call them "writing" but rather "idle".

Scroll Depth

We're able to see how far down the page your users are scrolling. The brighter the blue the more people who are seeing that section of the page.

Site Performance

How long does it take for your users to load the page? We start counting as soon as the page is opened and don't stop until everything is loaded. The "User Page Load" bar shows the average time while the "Page Load Distribution" shows the breakdown of how long it has taken for each user.

Top Pages

Here we show the 20 most popular pages on your site with each dot representing a certain number of users. Click on any page and chartbeat will pivot around it showing only the specific data for this page rather than the site as a whole. This is the best way to understand how a single article is performing. To go back to the overall view just click "clear".

Traffic Sources

Where are your visitors coming from? As people arrive on your site this sections tells you exactly how they arrived.

Links: A list of the domains sending traffic to your site and the number of people currently on your page from these domains. Clicking on any link will highlight which page these users have gone to.

Search: These are the search terms leading to your page right now. We track which words are sending people to your site then display the number of users who have arrived via that term.

Direct: These people are coming from any number of sources that aren't links or search terms. This could be links in emails, bookmarked pages, posts on Facebook, or directly entered URLs.

Load Time

User load time is an average of the amount of time it has taken for every user on your page to load the page. Specifically this is the time it takes to load your page from the first byte to the last.

Other common questions

How can I share chartbeat with my co-workers?

The easiest way to share chartbeat is by using the semi-private URL that you can find above each site's real-time analytics dashboard or in your Settings under Share Sites. This link can be revoked at any time by simply deleting and regenerating your API Key.

Can I send alerts to multiple or different email addresses?

At the moment, you have two options. You can have your current alerts go to an account in which you have set up forwarding rules so that you can send them to whomever you want. Or you can set up additional users.

Can I keep chartbeat from removing the www. from my site's URLs?

Instead of http://chartbeat.com/dashboard/?url=X.com go to http://chartbeat.com/dashboard/?url=www.X.com and it should work. We cannot treat the data from www. and not-www as separate, though.

Can I block internal IPs?

This has come up a few times, but is surprisingly hard for us to do. It's on our list - watch our twitter account or blog for future support.

Can we pay annually via invoice?

Sorry, we cannot do invoices at this time unless you have a very large account. However, you can get receipts.

How much does it matter where in the page I put the code?

You can put the portion for <head> lower in the page, but your page load time data will be less accurate. And you can put the portion for the bottom of the page higher - we just recommend putting it at the bottom to reduce clutter and to help your content load as fast as absolutely possible.

How can I share my chartbeat stats with my users?

There are several options! You can...

• ...use our site widgets to show specific bits of information
• ...use our API to write your own widget
• ...link to your dashboard from any of your pages
• ...use an iframe to embed the shareable dashboard in one of your pages