Why are visitor counts higher in Propel Replays than in Shopify?

Propel Replays sets a unique key in every visitor’s browser to identify repeat visitors when they return to your site. This approach works well with Chrome, Safari, and Edge browsers.

However, Instagram and Facebook have their own proprietary browsers that don’t persist Propel Replay’s unique visitor keys between visits. This creates a limitation: visitors browsing your site through Instagram and Facebook get counted as “new visitors” each time, since the system cannot recognize them as returning users.

Shopify handles this differently by employing additional “fingerprinting” techniques that allow them to identify visitors despite the restrictions imposed by Instagram and Facebook’s browsers.

Propel Commerce has indicated plans to implement similar fingerprinting methods in the future, though they have not announced a specific timeline for this enhancement.