Watch Your Launch Day Traffic Live
Updated
TL;DR
To watch launch day traffic, put the whoisbrowsing script on your site before you post, then open your own site while visitors arrive: each one appears as a live cursor on your real page, with the page they are on and where they came from. You can also turn on a browser notification that fires when someone new lands, as long as the dashboard tab is open.
Why launch day is different
On a normal Tuesday, a handful of people are on your site and a daily report is enough. On launch day (a Product Hunt post, a Hacker News thread, a newsletter mention) far more people than usual can arrive at once, and the questions are immediate:
- Is the traffic landing where I expect, or are people bouncing off the front page?
- Which source is actually sending people right now: the launch site, Google, a tweet, an AI assistant?
- Is anyone reaching the pricing page or the sign-up page?
- Is something broken for a device type I did not test?
A report that updates tomorrow cannot answer these. A live view can.
Set it up the day before
The script is under 4 KB gzipped, loads after your page and never changes how it looks. Add it once:
<script src="https://live.whoisbrowsing.com/s.js" data-site="YOUR_SITE_ID" defer></script>
Then test it yourself. Open your site in a Chrome Incognito or Safari private window: you appear as a normal visitor. Your own normal browser is never counted, which is why a private window is the way to check it.
Each website is separate. Localhost and production never mix, and www. is the same website as the bare domain, so one site entry covers both. See How it works for the full picture or install guides for your platform. If you use a coding agent, install with an AI agent takes one prompt.
What you see during the launch
Open your site after you click Watch. Every current visitor is drawn on the real page:
| What you see | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| A coloured cursor with a fading trail | Where a desktop visitor is looking and moving |
| Click ripples | What people try to click, including things that are not links |
| A see-through band | Which part of the page a phone or tablet visitor is viewing |
| Edge arrows | Visitors who have scrolled out of your view |
| Side panel counts per page, busiest first | Which pages the launch traffic is hitting |
| One line per person | Source (Google, Bing, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Claude, another site's link, or direct), approximate city, device, browser, operating system, time on site, pages this visit |
The source line is the useful one on launch day. If a thread is sending people, they show as "another site's link"; if an assistant recommends you, you see which one. More on that in how AI visits get labelled.
Turn on arrival alerts
The dashboard can send a browser notification when someone new arrives, naming the landing page. Alerts come from the open dashboard tab, which holds the live connection, so keep that tab open while you reply to comments. You will know when a visitor lands on your pricing page or sign-up page, rather than checking a graph later. On a very busy launch, an alert per visitor is noise: click Mute alerts and watch the side panel instead. More in get notified when someone visits.
A simple launch-day routine
- Add the script and verify yourself in a private window the day before.
- Open the live view when you post. Keep it on a second screen.
- Watch the side panel: if the busiest page is not the one you linked, check your link.
- Watch phone visitors. If their bands sit at the top and never move, your hero may be too tall on a phone.
- Note any page where several cursors stall, then fix it after the rush.
What you will not get
whoisbrowsing shows the present. It does not keep history, so there are no reports, no heatmaps over time and no replays to review after the launch. Nothing about your visitors is stored on our servers. If you want to review sessions afterwards or measure the whole launch week, pair it with an analytics tool, or use a replay product such as Microsoft Clarity or Contentsquare (which Hotjar is now part of).
When whoisbrowsing is NOT the right tool
If your goal is a post-launch funnel analysis, retention numbers or a replay of one confusing session, you need a tool that stores data. Use whoisbrowsing for the hours when you are watching and acting in real time.
Privacy on a busy day
Your visitors' browsers send the page, pointer position, clicks, scroll, device type, source, browser and operating system, and time on site. Never keystrokes, form values or page text. No cookies on your visitors. Visitors from the EU/EEA, UK and Switzerland, and browsers with Global Privacy Control, are never shown. Details are on the privacy page. It is free, with no credit card, so you can try it now with no sign-in.