Web Analytics Terminology - Back to Basic Series

The first in the Back to basic series is all about Web Analytics terminology. The common terms used on a day to day basis is the foundation of any web analyst. Web analytics terms can be sometimes tricky, understanding this will help you measure the right aspect of your site. This might not be the "entire" list but i have tried to list in the important terms which might be handy. Listed below are also related terms which is encountered in web analyst profession.

While most of these terms/definitions come from my experience with Omniture Site Catalyst and Google Analytics. I would like to emphasize that it's always a good practice to look into glossary of terms provided by the analytical solution one uses.

Feel free to leave your feedback/comment in case there's something i missed out!

TRAFFIC RELATED

Page Views:A page view occurs when a visitor accesses a page on your web site.
Visits:A visit occurs when a visitor comes to and navigates around your web site. A visit may consist of multiple page views. The visit persists until 30 minutes
Visitors:A visitor is a person that comes to your web site. Does not require a persistent cookie.
Daily Unique Visitors: Unique visitor that accesses your site for a single day. Multiple visits in one day count for a one daily unique visitor.
Weekly Unique Visitors: Unique visitor that accesses your site for a single week. Multiple visits in one week count for a one weekly unique visitor.
Monthly Unique visitors: Unique visitor that accesses your site for a single month. Multiple visits in one month count for a one monthly unique visitor.
Instances:The number of times a specific value is captured.
Single Access:The number of times a page or value is captured as the only value; i.e. page A is the only page visited, and then the visitor left your site.
Entries: The number of times a page is captured as the first page of a visit.
Exits: The number of times a page is captured as the last page of a visit.
Avg Page depth: Calculation of page views divided by visits. Shows how far or “deep” an
average person navigates into the site.
Avg Time spent/Visit Length: The amount of time (in minutes) that a visitor spends on a page. Also can show the amount of time a visitor spent on a site; also called visit length.
Reloads:Counted when the same pageName is loaded twice; i.e., page is refreshed.
pathviews: Not an entire visit length; usually a collection of paths, each of which is usually 3-4 pages long. Shows the frequency of visits on that particular path.
Referrer: A domain or URL used outside of your defined domain to access your site.The Referring Domains Report and the Referrers Report break referrer data into domains and URLs so that you can view the instances that visitors access your site from a particular domain or URL. For example, if a visitor clicks a link from Site A and arrives at your site, Site A is the referrer if it is not defined as part of your domain
Referring Domain: The domain your visitors came from before they were on your site.
Return Frequency:The number of days between repeat visits from your visitors.
Return Visits/Recency: Shows how many individuals have visited more than once.These visits are not for a specified time, but are all those that have viewed your site once and have
then returned.
Segmentation: The process of dividing data and putting it into categories for easy analysis.

COMMERCE RELATED:

e-Business: e-business is a term used to describe businesses running on the Internet, or
utilizing Internet technologies to improve the productivity or profitability of a
business.
Conversions: The successful completion of any specified event, as determined by the end
user.
Conversion Rate: The successful completion of specific activities by visitors to your web site
that somehow contributes positively to your online business.
Campaign: A marketing effort used to bring visitors to a specific web site.
Banner Ad: A web advertisement that is used to drive visitors from one location on the web to another in order to promote conversion.
Revenue: Revenue is captured on the purchase event, and is defined as the total dollar amount for the sum of the order and each product.
Order: Order is the number of times the purchase event is set.

CPA Cost per Acquisition: The cost for acquiring a new customer.
CPC Cost per Click :An advertising model in which the advertiser (sponsor) pays the publisher a certain amount each time the sponsor's ad is clicked. Also sometimes referred to as PPC (pay-per-click).
CPL Cost per Lead :The cost for gaining a lead to a new customer.
CPM Cost per thousand :Pertains to instances in which the code on the client’s web page generates a server call.
CPMM Cost per million Pertains to instances in which the code on the client’s web page generates a server call.

Other Important Terminology:

Cookie: A cookie is a text file that uniquely identifies and is stored in the user's browser. Cookies are most commonly used to identify individuals and remember general user preferences.

Cache: A temporary storage area that a web browser or service provider uses to store common pages and graphics that have been recently opened. The cache enables the browser to quickly reload pages and images that were recently viewed.

Bread Crumb: In a web page, a link-based navigation tool that displays your location in the
content hierarchy of a site.

Search Engine: A program that searches documents for specified keywords and returns a list of the documents where the keywords were found, ranked according to relevance (or at least that's the intent).

Search Engine Marketing: The process of driving highly targeted visitors to your web site.Search Engine Optimization The process of analyzing your web site and modifying it to enable search engines to read it, understand it, and index (or catalog) it correctly.

Spiders: An automated program that "crawls" the web, generally for the purpose of indexing web pages for use by search engines. Since most web pages contain links to other pages, a spider can start almost anywhere. Large search engines have many spiders working at the same time.

Next in the back to basic series

Methods of tracking

Creation of KPI's