The Live View tab shows what's happening on your website right now: who's on it, what page they're looking at, how long they've been there, and where they came from. The list refreshes every 5 seconds while you're looking at it.
If you're on a Pro plan or higher, you can also click Watch cursor on any visitor to open Ghost Multiplayer — an overlay that shows the visitor's mouse moving in real time on top of a screenshot of the page they're viewing.
Accessing Live View
- Sign in to your Zenovay dashboard at app.zenovay.com.
- Open the website you want to monitor.
- Select the Live View tab in the left sidebar (under Audience).
The list refreshes automatically every 5 seconds while the tab is visible.
Live View Components
Current Visitors Counter
A large number at the top of the page showing how many sessions are currently active, next to a green "Live" indicator:
- Updates every 5 seconds.
- Counts visitors active in the last 5 minutes.
Active Visitor List
Each active visitor is shown as a card with key session info. See the Visitor Card section below for what each field means.
Filters
A filter bar at the top of the tab lets you narrow the list. The filters only change what's shown on the screen — they don't change what's being polled. Available filters:
- Country — single-select dropdown of countries currently represented.
- Page — exact path match.
- Source — Direct, Organic, Paid, Social, or Referral.
- Device — Desktop, Mobile, or Tablet.
Clearing a filter restores the full list.
Visitor Card
Each visitor card displays:
| Field | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Country flag + city | Resolved from the visitor's IP at the moment the session started |
| Current page | The path they're looking at right now |
| Session duration | How many seconds since their first pageview in this session |
| Traffic source | Direct / Organic / Paid / Social / Referral |
| Device type | Desktop / Mobile / Tablet |
| Watch cursor button | (Pro+) Opens the Ghost Multiplayer overlay for this visitor |
A visitor stays in the list as long as their most recent event was less than 5 minutes ago. After 5 minutes of silence, the card disappears automatically.
City data may be empty for visitors using VPNs, proxies, or some mobile carriers. This is the same geolocation source used elsewhere in your dashboard.
Auto-Refresh
The Live View tab refreshes every 5 seconds while it's visible. When you switch to another browser tab or minimize the window, polling pauses automatically to save bandwidth and CPU. It resumes within a few seconds of bringing the tab back to the foreground.
No manual refresh or pause button is needed — the pause is driven by the browser's standard "is this tab visible?" signal.
Ghost Multiplayer (Pro+)
Ghost Multiplayer is an optional cursor overlay available on the Pro plan and above. It's off by default and activates per-visitor when you click Watch cursor.
How to use it
- On the Live View tab, find the visitor you want to watch.
- Click Watch cursor on their card.
- A full-screen overlay opens with:
- A screenshot of the page the visitor is currently on as the background
- An animated cursor showing their real-time mouse position
- A side panel with session details: anonymous visitor ID, session duration, pages visited this session, device, browser, and country
- Press Esc or click the Close button to dismiss the overlay. (Clicking the background does not close it, so an accidental click won't lose your place.)
The cursor updates every 1–2 seconds — there's a slight delay compared to instant, which we'll explain in the Limitations section.
Daily live-preview limit
The page screenshot behind the cursor (the live page preview) has a per-website daily cap that resets at 00:00 UTC:
| Plan | Page previews per website per day |
|---|---|
| Pro | 100 |
| Scale | 300 |
| Enterprise | 500 |
The live cursor overlay and page preview are Pro-and-above features — Free plans do not include them.
When you reach the daily cap, the overlay shows "Daily live-preview limit reached — resumes 00:00 UTC". This only pauses the page-screenshot background — the live cursor and the visitor list keep working normally until the next daily reset. Viewing a page that was already captured that day does not count against the limit again.
Privacy of Ghost Multiplayer
Ghost Multiplayer was designed to add zero new long-term tracking. As shipped in V1:
- No DOM content is captured. The overlay shows a screenshot of the page, not the live page. We never read form values, clipboard contents, or anything the visitor types.
- No long-lived storage. Cursor data lives in temporary edge storage for 10 seconds before evaporating. Nothing is written to the analytics database.
- No IP in the payload. The cursor stream contains only x/y coordinates as percentages of the visitor's viewport, a session ID, and a timestamp.
- GPC (Global Privacy Control) is respected. If a visitor's browser sets the GPC signal, the tracker does not stream cursor data and the server-side endpoint drops anything that arrives anyway.
The page preview is an anonymous server-side screenshot of the public page only — never of the real visitor's screen. It is taken as a privacy-respecting (Global Privacy Control) visit: it sets no cookies, hides cookie-consent banners, and does not trigger any marketing or analytics pixels. Form fields are blanked out, and none of the visitor's personal data is captured.
For visitors, this means activating Ghost Multiplayer adds no new cookies, no new local storage, and no permanent record of their cursor movements.
Ghost Multiplayer limitations
V1 ships with a few intentional limitations:
- The background is a screenshot, not a live iframe. Embedding the customer's actual page would require their site to allow framing on their own domain, which most don't by default. A live-iframe option is on the roadmap.
- The cursor has a 1–2 second lag. V1 uses HTTP polling on a 1-second cadence. A WebSocket upgrade for sub-second updates is on the roadmap.
- No company identification. Pro+ B2B identification (showing a company logo above an enterprise visitor's cursor) is on the roadmap but not in V1.
- No payment-history side panel. Linking the visitor to Stripe revenue is on the roadmap but not in V1.
- No cursor trails or recording. V1 shows only the live position. Trails and full recordings will merge with Session Replay, not duplicate it.
Upgrade to Pro to access Ghost Multiplayer. The base Live View tab and visitor list are included on every plan, including Free.
Current Visitor Count
What "Current" Means
A visitor is counted as "current" if their most recent event landed in the last 5 minutes. Events include:
- Page views
- Custom events
- Auto-captured interactions
Why Counts Fluctuate
The count goes up when:
- A new visitor arrives on the site.
- A returning visitor starts a new session.
The count goes down when:
- 5 minutes have passed since a visitor's last event.
- The visitor closes the tab or navigates away from your site entirely.
Live vs Analytics Data
The Live View tab and your main Analytics tab answer different questions and use different time windows.
| Live View | Analytics Tab |
|---|---|
| Last 5 minutes | The date range you picked |
| Refreshes every 5 seconds | Aggregated at query time |
| Shows individual visitors | Shows summary statistics |
| For watching events as they happen | For trends, comparisons, reports |
Use Live View for:
- Watching a product launch or campaign go live
- Verifying that tracking is working after a deploy
- Spot-checking real visitors during a demo
Use the Analytics tab for:
- Anything that needs historical comparison
- Reports, exports, and trend analysis
- Identifying patterns across days or weeks
Performance Considerations
Live View is more bandwidth-intensive than the regular Analytics tab because it polls every 5 seconds. To keep the experience snappy:
- We pause polling automatically when the tab is hidden — no action needed from you.
- The visitor list is capped server-side (up to 500 active sessions); on very busy sites the count above the list reflects the true total even if not every session is rendered as a card.
- Filters are applied client-side, so adding or removing them does not generate extra network traffic.
- Close the tab when you're not actively monitoring. The Analytics tab is cheaper if you only need totals.
Common Scenarios
No Visitors Showing
If Live View shows 0 visitors:
- Make sure your tracking code is installed and firing — see Verifying Your Installation to confirm.
- Visit your own site in a separate browser to test (your visit should appear within a few seconds).
- Quiet periods are normal — the list only shows visitors active in the last 5 minutes.
Visitor Count Seems Low
A few normal reasons:
- Some visitors run ad blockers that strip tracking requests. This affects every analytics tool, not just Zenovay.
- Some traffic is identified as bots and filtered out before it reaches Live View.
- Your peak periods may not align with when you're looking — try checking the daily totals in the Analytics tab for a fairer comparison.
Visitor List Says "Reconnecting"
If the visitor list briefly shows that it is reconnecting, that is normal transient behavior — it recovers automatically and no action is needed.
My Visit Isn't Appearing
Your own visit may be filtered out if:
- You've set up an IP-based exclusion in your website settings.
- You're using an ad blocker that strips the tracking request.
- You're browsing on
localhostand haven't setdata-allow-localhost="true"on your tracker.
Live View on Mobile
The Live View tab works on phones and tablets. The layout adjusts to a single-column visitor list, and Watch cursor opens an overlay sized to the device. All filters and the auto-refresh behavior are identical to desktop.
Related
- 3D Globe — the same realtime visitor stream, visualized on a rotating globe. See the 3D Globe introduction.
- Session Replay — recorded sessions for after-the-fact review (the natural follow-on once Ghost Multiplayer surfaces a session worth investigating in depth).
- Visitor Trends — historical realtime patterns, day-over-day and week-over-week.
If you need a feature listed under the Ghost Multiplayer limitations section sooner rather than later, the priority is set by demand — let us know via [email protected].