Forum Moderators: DixonJones
Either way, it's really up to your judgement. Most sites I'm aware of use the 30 minute rule for logs but I know of one that uses a longer period simply because he has a questionnaire on it that's rather lengthy.
You don't want to shorten it too much if you've got a cart running simply because your users may add one item to the cart and then go off to locate another item, and then forget where they put thier credit card and have to go hunt for it. If you start another session before they get back, you'll get some funny results in your logs.
And as for sessions in programming - that really depends upon what you're doing. Whatever you do, give the shopper time to wander and get lost before you time them out - but not too long!
Another site I do is tagged instead of logs and the session is set for 24 hours.
If do log analysis - best bet is 30 min, it seems to be the industry standard and default.
We did some test on site last month, If youre interested this [www34.brinkster.com] is how the sessions counted changed with various inactivity timeouts. After 30min, very little change. Inactivity timeout is another way of ending a session.
HTTP1.1 STATUS 403 Remote Access to this object forbidden
Is what I get (view source) on that link aspdaddy.
Don't forget that, if you're using Webtrends, time out is for inactivity! Don't worry, as long as they're clicking, the session will not end. You don't want to set it up too high either, because then people who get to your site, and then rush to a meeting will be counted as spending much time on the site. That is why it is always a good thing to measure the number of page views for session over 19+minutes (a standard Webtrends metrics). 30-minute time out is fine, and in some cases it could even be shorter.
AFAIK only IBM Site Analyser does this.
