What you'll see in your first hour of data

A walkthrough of exactly what's happening — and what's not — in the first 60 minutes after you install Follow The Spend.

You just clicked "Install" on the Shopify app store, approved the permissions, and landed on your Pulse dashboard. Now what?

Here's what's actually happening behind the scenes, what to expect on screen, and what not to worry about.

The first 60 seconds

The moment install finishes, three things happen in the background:

Your pixel goes live. A tiny script (intentiq.js) is added to your storefront via Shopify's Script Tag API. No theme edit, no code paste — Shopify injects it on every page automatically.
Shopify webhooks are subscribed. We listen for new orders, refunds, and a handful of customer events directly from Shopify's API.
Your 7-day trial starts. No card needed. Cancel any time before day 7 and nothing is charged.

By the time you see the Pulse dashboard for the first time, all three are already done.

If you're staring at the dashboard wondering "where's my data?" — that's normal. The pixel needs visitors to see, and the webhooks need orders to record. Read on.

Minutes 1–10: events start flowing

Pulse will show 0 of everything until the first real visitor lands on your store after install. The moment that happens — usually within a few minutes for any active Shopify store — you'll see:

Live visitors counter tick up
Sessions today start counting
Channel breakdown populate as visitors arrive from different sources

If your store has steady traffic, you'll see meaningful numbers within 10 minutes. If you're a new or low-traffic store, give it a few hours.

Minutes 10–30: first sessions take shape

A "session" in Follow The Spend is a continuous browsing visit — typically a 30-minute window of activity. Most visitors browse for 2–8 minutes, so within half an hour of install you'll see:

The first completed sessions (visitor browsed and either left or converted)
Top landing pages start ranking by traffic
Channel attribution begins forming — direct, organic, paid, referral

This is also when Visitor Journeys starts populating with real timelines you can click into.

Minutes 30–60: first orders land

When a Shopify order is placed and payment is captured, the order webhook fires within seconds. Pulse will show:

The order in Today's revenue
The visitor's full journey linked to the order (if we identified them)
Conversion attribution under whichever model you have selected

Buy It Now and Shop Pay express checkouts are a known exception — they can land as "direct" attribution rather than the visitor's actual marketing source. See Why Buy It Now / Shop Pay conversions show as direct for the why and what's coming.

What's not going to look right yet

Three things will look thin or empty in your first hour, and that's expected:

Multi-session journeys. Most visitors take more than one visit before they buy. After hour one, you'll mostly have single-session journeys. The picture fills in over days. See Why your data feels thin on day one.
Attribution model comparisons. First-touch vs last-touch vs linear only show meaningful differences once you have multi-touch journeys to compare. Give it 48–72 hours.
Trend lines. Day-over-day comparisons need at least 2 days of data. Your first chart will be a single dot.

A 60-second smoke test

Want to confirm tracking is alive? Open your store in an incognito window and browse a product. Within 30 seconds, your Live Visitors counter should tick up by one.

Full walkthrough: How to verify tracking is working correctly.

What to focus on in your first hour

Skim the dashboard. Don't try to draw conclusions yet.
Run the smoke test above.
Open a Visitor Journey and click through a real timeline to learn the UI.
Come back tomorrow.