The Live tab of Insights shows who is on your website at this moment — which page they are reading, how long they have been there, where they came from — and lets you start the conversation before they do. A Recent view keeps everyone who visited in the last 30 days.
Live visitors are included on the Advanced, Pro and Ultimate plans and work through the web chat widget (Setting Up the Web Chat Widget). For the analytics side of Insights — trends, pages, sources — see Website analytics.
Who is on the site right now
Open Insights in the sidebar and switch to the Live tab. Its toggle has two views: Live — everyone on the site now — and Recent.
Each row shows the visitor’s name, the page they are on, where they are, their browser, how long they have been on the site and how many times they have visited. A visitor who arrived from an ad shows a Paid label first. Badges:
- Online / Idle — the dot is green while the visitor is active; after a few quiet minutes it turns grey, and then the visitor drops off the Live list (they stay in Recent).
- New / Returning — whether this browser has visited your site before. Returning means more than one visit, with the same 30-minute rule the Overview uses.
- In chat — the visitor has an open conversation with you right now.
The search box finds visitors by page, name or country, and the chip row narrows the list: Online now, In chat, Returning, New, Identified (has a name), the traffic source, the country — and Hide me, which removes your own browser from the list. The menu on the right sorts by most recent, longest on site or most visits.
A visitor’s name is their contact’s name — the one they gave in the pre-chat form, or one you set. Until they give one, the row shows Visitor and a short code; a visitor who came from an email-campaign link shows the recipient’s name marked Via email.
Recent: who was here earlier
Nobody is deleted when they leave. Switch the toggle to Recent to see everyone who was on your site in the last 24 hours, 7 days or 30 days — one row per visitor, most recently active first, with the last page of their latest visit, how long it lasted and how many pages it covered, their source, country and total number of visits. The same chips filter this view, and someone who is on the site right now still has a green dot.
The visitor detail panel
Click a visitor — in Live or Recent — to open their details:
- Name — click it to rename the visitor. This renames their contact, so the inbox shows the same name, and a name you set is never overwritten by what the visitor later types in the pre-chat form.
- Pages — the current page and the pages of this visit.
- Location & network — country, city and network provider where available, and the visitor’s current IP address.
- Device & source — the app they are in (when it isn’t an ordinary browser), browser, operating system, the referrer, and the campaign trail source › medium › campaign with a Paid label for ad clicks. See Tracking traffic sources, UTM campaigns and ads.
- Email — shown when the visitor arrived through an email-campaign link carrying {{cn_id}}: who that email was sent to and from which campaign. See Email marketing campaigns.
- Activity — total visits, first and last seen, and this visit’s length and page count.
- Conversations — the visitor’s open and past conversations with your team.
Inviting a visitor to chat
- Select a visitor on the Live view.
- Type a short greeting in the box at the top of the panel. Something concrete works best — for example: “Hi! I see you’re on the pricing page — happy to help you pick a plan.” Two helpers sit under the box: Presets inserts one of your saved replies, and Draft with AI writes a short opener from the page the visitor is on, in their language. Once there is text in the box the same button becomes Improve with AI. The AI never invents prices or availability and never promises a follow-up; each use costs one AI call from the project balance, like the other assist tools.
- Click Invite to chat.
The chat widget opens on the visitor’s screen with your message. On your side Chatonio creates the conversation and assigns it to you, so you are ready when they reply. If the visitor already has an open conversation, the panel shows Open chat instead. If they don’t answer, nothing else happens — the invite is one message, with no follow-ups and no emails.
An invite only reaches someone who is on the site at that moment. For a visitor in Recent who has already left, the panel says so and lists their conversations instead.
To greet visitors automatically — by page, time on site, campaign or exit intent — without anyone watching the list, use proactive chat messages.
Privacy
- The list is built from your own site, through your own widget, with no cookies; bots are filtered out.
- The visitor’s IP address is shown so your team can investigate fraud or abuse. The web chat session keeps the last address seen for up to 12 months; the Overview analytics never store it.
- Returning visitors are recognised by an identifier in the visitor’s browser; after they clear their browser data they appear as new.
I don’t see anyone
- The widget must be installed and loading on the pages your visitors are on.
- A new visitor can take a few seconds to appear; someone who does nothing for a few minutes drops off the Live view (check Recent).
- If the tab shows a notice instead of the list, the project owner’s plan doesn’t include Live visitors.