People vs devices
Máximo can describe activity two ways: by device (a single browser’s visitor ID) or by person (an identity that’s been stitched together from one or more devices, once a strong identifier links them, see How it works). The two counts answer different questions, and they won’t match.
Why they differ
Section titled “Why they differ”A device count is a raw tally of distinct browsers Máximo has seen. A person count only goes down from there (never up) because it collapses multiple devices into one person wherever there’s strong evidence they belong to the same shopper. A shopper who browsed on their phone and checked out on a laptop shows up as two devices but one person.
That means:
- Device counts will always be greater than or equal to person counts, never the other way around.
- The gap between the two grows with how often shoppers switch devices before providing a strong identifier (email, phone, or completing a Shopify checkout).
- Sessions that never reach a point where a strong identifier is available (a shopper who only ever browses and never checks out, for instance) stay device-level only. There’s no way to stitch them to a person without that evidence.
What each is good for
Section titled “What each is good for”- Device-level counts are the right lens for on-site behavior that doesn’t need to be tied to a specific shopper, traffic volume, page views, or how many distinct browsers hit a given page.
- Person-level counts are the right lens for anything about a shopper’s overall relationship with your store, how many distinct customers converted, or how a shopper’s journey looked across the devices they actually used.
Reading numbers elsewhere in Máximo
Section titled “Reading numbers elsewhere in Máximo”When you see a metric elsewhere in Máximo, it helps to know which lens it’s using. A visitor or session count that looks larger than you’d expect for your customer base is very likely counting devices, not people, that’s expected, not an error. If a number seems to double-count the same shopper, check whether it’s a device-level metric before assuming something is wrong.