How it works
Steady looks at three signals to classify each visitor into an audience segment:
Visit frequency — how many days in the last 30 days the person has visited your publication
Time on site — total seconds spent reading your content
Referrer — where they came from (search engine, social media, your newsletter, or direct/unknown)
If a visitor is logged in, their membership status is also taken into account.
All of this data is stored locally in the visitor's browser — nothing is sent to a server.
Audience segments
Based on those signals, each visitor falls into one of the following segments:
First-timers
Returning visitors
Loyal readers
Logged-in visitors or paying members
Layer types
Layer | Its purpose |
A gentle, informational prompt — no hard ask. Good for first impressions. | |
Invites the visitor to subscribe to your newsletter. | |
Prompts the visitor to become a paying member. | |
Prompts the visitor to either allow ads or support you directly. |
Smart Layers on your Steady pages
Smart Layers runs automatically on all your Steady publication pages. There's no need to configure which layer appears where — the right layer is shown to the right visitor based on their behaviour.
Unlike on your own website, you can't assign a specific layer to a specific Steady page. If you want to prevent a particular layer from appearing on Steady, you can turn it off on its settings page — all layer types are listed in the Layers section of your backend.
You can see how many views each layer has received in the last 7 days on your Layers overview page.
Frequently asked questions
How can I override Smart Layers?
On your own website, you can assign a specific layer to a specific page or group of pages using Advanced Settings. On your Steady pages, Smart Layers always decides — manual overrides aren't available there.
What if I have a hard paywall on a post?
A hard (non-dismissible) paywall always takes precedence over Smart Layers. If a post has a hard paywall marker, that paywall will be shown regardless of the visitor's segment.
What if I don't have all layer types set up?
Smart Layers works best when you have several layer types configured. If a layer type isn't set up, the feature will fall back to the next available layer.
Where is visitor data stored?
Visit frequency, time on site, and referrer data are all stored locally in the visitor's browser (localStorage). No personal data is sent to Steady's servers as part of the segmentation logic.
Can I see how my readers are distributed across segments?
Not yet — but analytics by segment is on our roadmap. In the future, you'll be able to see how readers move through your funnel (source → visit → newsletter → membership) broken down by segment.