Web analytics involves measuring, collecting, analyzing, and reporting internet data to understand and optimize website usage. It can be used as a tool for business and market research as well as improving website effectiveness. Web analytics applications can also help measure the results of traditional advertising campaigns by estimating how traffic to a website changes after a new campaign launch. Key metrics include the number of visitors and page views, which provide information about traffic and popularity trends useful for market research.

1. Web Analytics
Goals, Metrics, KPIs, Dimensions, Targets
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2. Report Metrics
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Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet data for
purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage.
Web analytics is not just a tool for measuring web traffic but can be used as a tool for
business and market research, and to assess and improve the effectiveness of a web site.
Web analytics applications can also help companies measure the results of traditional print
or broadcast advertising campaigns. It helps one to estimate how traffic to a website changes
after the launch of a new advertising campaign. Web analytics provides information about
the number of visitors to a website and the number of page views. It helps gauge traffic and
popularity trends which is useful for market research.
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3. KEY CONCEPTS
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4. 5. KEY CONCEPTS
• METRICS: "The columns" "The units". The actual count for a selected KPI
• KPIs: Key Performance Indicators - the important business measures for your
site e.g. Test Drives, Leads, BP
CORE METRICS
• VISITORS: person (IP Address) coming to the website
• VISITS: How many times has that visitor visited your website
• PAGE VIEWS/INSTANCES: counts the number of times an action occurred
Visitor
Visit Visit
VisitPage Page Page
View View View
Page Page Page
View View View
Page
View
Page
View
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5. Web Analytics: Goals, Metrics, KPIs, Dimensions, Targets
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6. Web Analytics: Goals, Metrics, KPIs, Dimensions, Targets
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"What is the difference between a metric and a key performance indicator (KPI)?"
"What is a dimension in analytics?"
"What is segmentation?"
"Are goals metrics?"
And many more.
There seems to be genuine confusion about the simplest, most foundational, parts of web
metrics / analytics.
Source: Web Analytics 101
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7. Web Analytics 101: Definitions: Goals, Metrics, KPIs, Dimensions, Targets
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Business Objectives:
This is the answer to the question: "Why does your website exist?"
Or: "What are you hoping to accomplish for your business by being on the web?"
Or: "What are the three most important priorities for your site?"
Or other questions like that.
Without a clearly defined list of business objectives you are doomed, because if you don't
know where you are going then any road will take you there.
The objectives must be DUMB: Doable. Understandable. Manageable. Beneficial.
progress objectives directions90% of the failures in web analytics, the reasons companies are
data rich and information poor, is because they don't have DUMB objectives.
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8. Web Analytics 101: Definitions: Goals, Metrics, KPIs, Dimensions, Targets
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Goals:
Goals are specific strategies you'll leverage to accomplish your business objectives.
Business objectives can be quite strategic and high level. Sell more stuff. Create happy
customers. Improve marketing effectiveness.
Sell more stuff really means we have to:
1. do x 2. improve y 3. reduce z
Improve marketing effectiveness might translate into these goals because currently they are
our priorities:
1. identify broken things in m
2. figure out how to do n
3. experiment with p type of campaigns
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9. Web Analytics 101: Definitions: Goals, Metrics, KPIs, Dimensions, Targets
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Metric:
A metric is a number.
That is the simplest way to think about it.
Technically a metric can be a Count (a total) or a Ratio (a division of one number by another).
Examples of metrics that are a Count is Visits or Pageviews.
Metrics form the
life blood of all the
measurement we
do. They are the
reason we call the
web the most
accountable
channel on the
planet.
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10. Web Analytics 101: Definitions: Goals, Metrics, KPIs, Dimensions, Targets
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Key Performance Indicator:
Key performance indicators (KPI's) are metrics. But not normal metrics. They are our BFF's.
A key performance indicator (KPI) is a metric that helps you understand how you are doing
against your objectives.
That last word – objectives – is critical to something being called a KPI, which is also why KPI's
tend to be unique to each company.
For example, I run www.buyproducts.com. My business objective is to sell lots of stuff. My
web analytics KPI is: Average Order Size.
Business objective: Sell Stuff. KPI: Average Order Size.
I might use other metrics in my reports, say Visits or # of Videos Watched or whatever. But
they won't be my KPI's.
Business Objectives -> Goals -> KPI's -> Metrics -> Magic.
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11. Web Analytics 101: Definitions: Goals, Metrics, KPIs, Dimensions, Targets
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Targets:
Targets are numerical values you have pre-determined as indicators success or failure.
It is rare, even with the best intentions, that you'll create targets for all the metrics you'll
report on.
Yet it is critical that you create targets for each web analytics key performance indicator.
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12. Web Analytics 101: Definitions: Goals, Metrics, KPIs, Dimensions, Targets
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Dimension:
A dimension is, typically, an attribute of the Visitor to your website.
Here's a simplistic pictorial representation. . .
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13. Web Analytics 101: Definitions: Goals, Metrics, KPIs, Dimensions, Targets
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The source that someone came from (referring urls, campaigns, countries etc) is a dimension
in your web analytics data.
So is technical information like browsers or mobile phones or (god save you if you are still
doing daily reports on) screen resolution or ISP used.
The activity a person performed such as the landing page name, the subsequent pages they
saw, videos they played, searches they did on your website and the products they purchased
are all dimensions.
Finally the day they visited, the days since their last visit (if returning visitor) the number of
visits they made, the number of pages they saw are all dimensions as well. I know, they
sound like metrics. But they are, as the definition says up top, attributes of the visitor and
their activity on your website.
This is a crude way to think about it but… Dimensions almost always appear in rows in a
report / excel spreadsheet.
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14. Web Analytics 101: Definitions: Goals, Metrics, KPIs, Dimensions, Targets
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Dimensions allow you to group your data into different buckets and they are most
frequently used to slice and dice the web analytics data.
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15. Web Analytics 101: Definitions: Goals, Metrics, KPIs, Dimensions, Targets
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Segments:
A segment contains a group of rows from one or more dimensions.
In aggregate almost all data is useless (like # of Visits). The best way to find insights is to
segment the data using one or more dimensions (like # of Visits from: USA, UK, India as a %
of All Visits).
You segment by dimensions and report by metrics.
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16. REPORT METRICS
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17. Report Metrics
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Building Block Terms:
Page, Page Views, Visits, Unique Visitors, New Visitor, Repeat Visitor, &Repeat Visitor.
Visit Characterization:
Entry Page, Landing Page, Exit Page, Visit Duration, Referrer, Internal Referrer, External
Referrer, Search Referrer, Visit Referrer, Original Referrer, Click-through, Click-through
Rate/Ratio, Page Views per Visit
Content Characterization:
Page Exit Ratio, Single-Page Visits, Bounce Rate
Conversion Metrics:
Event, Conversion
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18. Report Metrics
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Building Block Terms
Page
Type: Dimension
Calculation: An analyst definable unit of content.
Page View
Type: Count
Calculation: The number of times a page was viewed.
Visits (Sessions)
Type: Count
Calculation : A sequence of page views in a sitting. The visits metric is commonly used in
reports that display the number of user sessions within the selected time period.
The Visits Report measures traffic to your site by counting the number of sessions in a
given time period. You can use this report to observe traffic patterns, or to identify
impact of site modifications made on your site.
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19. Report Metrics
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Unique Visitors
Type: Count
Calculation: The number of inferred individual people (filtered for spiders and robots),
within a designated reporting timeframe, with activity consisting of one or more visits to
a site. Each individual is counted only once in the unique visitor measure for the
reporting period.
New Visitor
Type: Count
Calculation: The number of Unique Visitors with activity including a first-ever Visit to a
site during a reporting period. Note that "first-ever" is with respect to when data began
being properly collected on your site by your current tool.
Return(ing) Visitor
Type: Count
Calculation: The number of Unique Visitors with activity consisting of a Visit to a site
during a reporting period and where the Unique Visitor also Visited the site prior to the
reporting period.
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20. Report Metrics
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Repeat Visitor
Type: Count
Calculation: The number of Unique Visitors with activity consisting of two or more Visits
to a site during a reporting period.
Visit Characterization
Entry Page
Type: Dimension
Calculation: The Entry Pages report shows you which pages on your site were the first
page of a visit. You can use this report to identify which of your web pages are the most
frequent points of entry or to optimize the primary entry points on your site.
Landing Page
Type: Dimension
Calculation: A page view intended to identify the beginning of the user experience
resulting from a defined marketing effort.
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21. Report Metrics
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Exit Page
Type: Dimension
Calculation: The last page on a site accessed during a visit, signifying the end of a
visit/session.
Visit Duration
Type: Count
Calculation: The length of time in a session. Calculation is typically the timestamp of the
last activity in the session minus the timestamp of the first activity of the session.
Traffic Sources: The Referrer Type report takes all referring traffic to your site and categorizes
them based on domain. This report can be helpful in determining which general methods
users are accessing your site. Using Marketing Channels may be better in obtaining this
information, however the Referrer Type report takes much less configuration in order to work
properly.
Referrer
Type: Dimension
Calculation: Referrer is a generic term that describes the source of traffic to a page or visit.
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22. Report Metrics
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Exit Page
Type: Dimension
Calculation: The last page on a site accessed during a visit, signifying the end of a
visit/session.
Visit Duration
Type: Count
Calculation: The length of time in a session. Calculation is typically the timestamp of the
last activity in the session minus the timestamp of the first activity of the session.
Traffic Sources: The Referrer Type report takes all referring traffic to your site and categorizes
them based on domain. This report can be helpful in determining which general methods
users are accessing your site. Using Marketing Channels may be better in obtaining this
information, however the Referrer Type report takes much less configuration in order to work
properly.
Referrer
Type: Dimension
Calculation: Referrer is a generic term that describes the source of traffic to a page or visit.
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23. Report Metrics
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• Internal Referrer - The internal referrer is a page URL that is internal to the web site or a
web-property within the web site as defined by the user. Not all tools report internal
referrers as a group.
• External Referrer - The external referrer is a page URL where the traffic is external or
outside of the web site or a web-property defined by the user.
• Search Referrer - The search referrer is an internal or external referrer for which the URL
has been generated by a search function. Many tools segment and report on search
referrers as a group; however the exact definitions vary from tool to tool. Most will
include the "big" search engines, such as Yahoo, Google, and MSN/Live. However, they
vary in whether or not they exclude mail servers from these sources, or whether they use
wildcards to capture any URL containing the word "search.“
Click-through
Type: Count
Calculation: Number of times a link was clicked by a visitor.
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24. Report Metrics
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Click-through Rate/Ratio
Type: Ratio
Calculation: The number of click-throughs for a specific link divided by the number of
times that link was viewed.
Page Views per Visit
Type: Ratio
Universe: Aggregate, Segmented, Individual
Calculation: The number of page views in a reporting period divided by number of visits
in the same reporting period.
Content Characterization
Page Exit Ratio
Type: Ratio
Calculation: Number of exits from a page divided by total number of page views of that
page.
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25. Report Metrics
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Single Page Visits (Bounces)
Type: Dimension or Count
Calculation: A visit that consists of one page view.
Bounce Rate
Type: Ratio
Calculation: Single page visits divided by entry pages.
Conversion Metrics
Conversion terms record special activities on a site, such
as purchases, that have particular business value for the analyst.
They often represent the bottom-line “success” for a visit.
Event
Type: Dimension and/or Count
Calculation: Any logged or recorded action that has a specific date and time assigned to
it by either the browser or server.
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26. Report Metrics
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Conversion
Type: Dimension or Count
Calculation: The number of times a desired outcome was accomplished.
Because a Conversion can be both a metric and a count, a web analytics report may show
“number of conversions,” “number of purchases,” “number of sign-ups,” etc. (conversion as a
count), or it may show specific conversions and how many events, page views, visits, or
unique visitors were associated with the conversion (conversion as a dimension).
Conversion Rate
Type: Ratio
Calculation: The ratio of conversions over a relevant denominator.
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27. Report Metrics (SiteCatalyst)
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• Keywords: The Search Keywords reports show the search keywords (or search phrases) that
customers used to arrive at your site, and how those customers affected your site’s Success Metrics.
This can help you determine how to better tailor your site code, such as META tags, or which
keywords to register with search engines. You can see if certain keywords resulted in more orders or
if other keywords caused higher instances of cart additions
• Top Pages: The Pages report ranks the pages on your site based on those that receive the most
traffic. By default, pages are ranked by the number of times they were viewed, with the pages
receiving the most page views listed first. You can use this report to view which pages associated
with products users are most interested in, measure pages in their effectiveness to conversion
events, or to simply view all page traffic in a single easy-to-read report.
• Top Banner ID’s: There are several common ways to track internal campaigns (such as banner ads
that lead to other portions of your site) in SiteCatalyst. Each method uses an eVar, which by nature
can associate conversion beyond the page it was defined on.
• File Downloads: The SiteCatalyst File Downloads Report helps you understand how often your
visitors download files from your site. Examples of file downloads may be word processor
documents, spreadsheets, audio files, movie files, user manuals, etc. This includes both files being
saved and opened directly from the browser, as well as files saved to the user's computer. The report
shows the name of the file being downloaded, including the complete URL required to access the
file.
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28. Q&A
• What Questions do you have?
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