Analytics Glossary: KPI – Key Performance Indicators
KPI or Key Performance Indicators:
- Typically available in dashboards and provides an overall understanding of how the site is performing. Some KPIs include conversions, clicks and page views but are defined by the analytics user.
In my experience most dashboards can get pretty cluttered. My recommendation is to give yourself a comfortable period of time in using the program (a week, a month, whatever you’re satisfied with) and then review the content on your dashboard to remove anything you haven’t determined is a KPI and you don’t need to review on a daily basis.
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Glossary Definition From Website Magazine, February 2008.
Analytics Glossary: Sessionization
Sessionization:
- Refers to methods used to define a session (includes cookies, IP address, IP+Agent and others) telling the analytics system how to measure – or not measure – a series of page requests from the same individual or browsing machine.
In order to be able to track visitors accurately, you need to make sure you’re not counting the same visitor over and over again. This is where Sessionization comes in handy. Otherwise you could be counting yourself refreshing the page after making updates 10 times and falsely inflate your data.
Be wary of your analytics software and make sure that it’s not just counting page loads or else you get a grossly inflated number.
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Glossary Definition From Website Magazine, February 2008.
Analytics Glossary: Frequency
Frequency:
- The number of times a visitor has visited a site during a reporting period. Average Frequency is the average of all visitors’ frequencies during the reporting period. Frequency is a retention metric and part of RFM (recency, frequency, monetary) analysis.
This goes hand in hand with bounce rate, which tells you how many people leave your website after visiting a certain page. Generating leads and driving traffic is important, but you have to make your website sticky… once they’re there, make them want to stay and come back. Monitor this with the frequency data and bounce rates.
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Glossary Definition From Website Magazine, February 2008.
Analytics Glossary: Average Lifetime Value
Average Lifetime Value:
- The average of the lifetime value of a visitor or multiple visitors during the reporting period. Each visitor’s lifetime value is the total monetary value of a visitor’s past orders since visitor tracking began.
Since I recently had a snafu with my analytics, I’ve decided to start this bi-weekly series of glossary terms on analytics and share some things I’ve learned with you about it! Take notes, children!
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Glossary Definition From Website Magazine, February 2008.
