User Time Zone

User time zone determines a user's local clock — the reference against which their events should be translated into a time.

Time zone looks like a technical detail but directly affects any time-based analysis: if events are recorded on server time rather than the audience's clock, every hourly report and temporal heatmap shifts by hours and a false peak appears. For a single-country audience this error is a constant shift and correctable, but for a multi-country audience it becomes more complex because users are on different local clocks and there is no single hour. A common trap is inferring the time zone from geolocation; the two usually agree but not always, since a user may be traveling or have their device set to another zone. The right practice is that before reading any hourly report, it must be clear whose clock the report is on — the server's, the project owner's, or the visitor's.