Web analytics terminology and abbreviations

Bounce rate

A percentage value that represents the amount of visitors that exited the site from the same page they landed on (1-page visits).

Conversion rate

Shortest explanation: Turning average website visitors into valuable visitors, e.g. loyal visitors, leads, customers etc.

Conversion goal

The point on your site which, when it is reached, indicates visitors have converted. This could be the thank you page that follows the submission on a registration page.

Conversion Funnel

The term ‘funnel’ gives a visual representation of what conversion is about. You start with a large amount of visitors, but a much smaller amount of visitors come out at the bottom of the funnel (visitors reaching your goals). A conversion funnel usually has a number of levels, tagged by the pages that visitors follow on their way to reaching the defined goal. Each level always sees a loss of visitors, therefore after every level the amount of visitors decreases and a funnel shape is logically visible.

CPA

Cost per Acquisition. How much did it cost you to attract a newly converted visitor (e.g. new customer)?

CPC

Cost Per Click.

CTR

Click Through Rate.

Drilldown

This is an analysis technique which basically means digging in deeper into the data, trying to find the exact source of a change.

Hits

A logfile relic: Misunderstood and rather irrelevant for most web analytics purposes. A hit is an action on a website, meaning the viewing of a page or downloading of a file, and usually both. Imagine a page with five images. One page view would load e.g. 1 htm file and 5 images, which translates into 6 hits. Boasting that your website received a million hits last month is NOT impressive, it’s an empty value in this regard.

Impression

The number of times an item is shown/loaded (usually adverts in the form of banners or paid search results, for example).

Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

KPI’s are the most important statistics that give you a snapshot overview of how your site is doing. Which KPI’s are important to keep an eye on has to be determined on an individual basis, according to what the site’s main goal is. Commerce, lead generating etc.

Landing page

Is used to refer to pages that are the point of entry for visitors, but more commonly used as a term for pages that are a point of entry for visitors but are specifically optimized to maximize conversion rates. 

Metric

A measured value.

Organic traffic

“Free traffic” in its most basic explanation. Think of natural referrers (through free links) or Google search engine traffic (non-Google Adwords traffic).

Overlay

This term refers to a reporting view that shows you which links on a page of your choice are most popular, using a number of indicators such as color shading, basic statistics, etc. See the Site Overlay report in Google Analytics.

Page view

The successful loading of a page.

PPC

Pay-Per-Click (e.g. Google AdWords paid search results).

Query string

A query string can be a part of a URL and can contain parameters/variables that send instructions to the web server. Query strings often appear in the URL of dynamically generated pages. An example URL with query string (bolded) is: http://www.site.com/page.php?variable=1&secondvariable=2

Referrer

Referrers are generic websites, search engines, banner ads, weblogs: online sources through which visitors find your site.

ROI

Return On Investment is a more general business term indicating (in its most basic explanation) how much benefit is reaped from the resources invested in, for example, a marketing campaign.

RPA

Revenue per Acquisition. How much revenue did a newly converted visitor (e.g. new customer) generate?

RPC

Revenue Per Click.

Unique visitor (aka ‘uniques’)

This counts only the first time a visitor visits a site, based on their IP address. Returning visitors are logically not counted.

Visit

A visitor session. Note that a new visit is registered if a visitor leaves a site open in the browser and logs at least an x amount of minutes of activity (usually 30 mins).