Trigger a welcome experience only on the very first page of a session
Picture the moment: a traveler who booked with us before comes back to browse. I want a small "welcome back" module to greet them right when they land, and then get out of the way while they compare destinations.
I built an audience with user is returning and it works, except the module follows them onto every single page of the visit, which turns a warm greeting into a nag. Is there some kind of "first pageview of the session" condition I'm missing? Feels like there should be one
1 answer
There is exactly that condition:
session is starting and user is returningsession is starting targets the first interaction of a session, so combined with your returning-user clause it produces precisely the welcome-back moment you described.
The reason your current audience follows people around is that audiences are re-evaluated in real time on every interaction. user is returning stays true for the whole visit, so the experience keeps matching page after page. Adding the session clause makes the condition true only at the start.
One thing to know for testing: a session ends after 30 minutes of inactivity by default (configurable from 1 minute up to 24 hours), and that timeout defines when the next "starting" moment can happen. So if you close the tab and reopen it two minutes later, you are still in the same session and the greeting will not reappear. Wait out the timeout or use a fresh browser profile when verifying.