Understanding Website Analytics Terms

Did you know that over 250,000 new websites are created daily, making the digital landscape a bustling and competitive space? In this fast-paced sector, understanding your website analytics is like having a secret weapon for your business’s online growth.

Whether you’re a seasoned digital marketer, a business owner, or a blogger, knowing what specific marketing analytics mean and how to interpret them can give you a competitive edge. So, let’s dive in and explore some standard website analytics terms that can equip you to make intelligent, data-based decisions and reap the rewards of your digital marketing efforts!

Sessions vs Engaged Sessions

A session occurs when a user interacts with your website within a given period of time, including multiple page views, events triggered, social interactions, and e-commerce transactions. Essentially, a session begins when a user lands on your site and ends when the user leaves your site or if there’s been no activity for 30 minutes.

However, an engaged session is much more valuable as it provides better insight into how users behave when landing on your site. An engaged session can only occur when a user completes specific interactions on your website. But what are these interactions?

For an engaged session to occur, a user must complete either:

• Two page views/screen views
• Have an average session longer than 10 seconds
• A key event, such as a conversion

Engaged sessions are crucial to help you understand whether or not your website content resonates with your audience.

Page Views vs Unique Page Views

Although they provide less insight than other metrics, page views are still important. In short, page views are the total number of times a web page is viewed. It’s important to note that 100 page views do not mean 100 people have been on your website. If a user were to leave the web page and then return to the same page, that would count as two page views.

Although a relatively simple metric, page views can help us determine what our audience is interested in and identify any user behavioural trends.

On the other hand, unique page views provide a more accurate insight into user behaviour, as this view filters out multiple views by the same user within a single session. Removing all the repeat visits helps to provide a much clearer picture of how many different users are viewing your web pages.

Understanding user behaviour can give you a significant advantage over your competitors. Check out our blog, ‘Understanding Website Behaviour Analytics,’ to enhance your knowledge and improve your marketing strategy.

If you need a helping hand, our analytics service page can help support your business and take it to the next level. 

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page sessions in which the user leaves your site without interacting with it further. For example, if a user lands on your site, completes no action, and immediately leaves, they have ‘bounced’ from your website. According to SEMrush, a reasonable bounce rate is 40% or lower, and a bounce rate of 60% or higher indicates that you need to revisit the content on your web pages.

Traffic Sources

Sources of traffic sources in Google Analytics 4 tell you where your website traffic is coming from. The common traffic sources are:

• Direct Traffic: Users who type your website URL directly into their browser.

• Organic Traffic: Users who find your site through organic searches on a search engine like Google.

• Referral Traffic: Users who visit your site from a link on another website.

• Paid Traffic: Users who land on your website through paid advertising such as PPC.

Our Final Thoughts on Website Analytics 

• Engaged sessions provide insight into how your website content resonates with your target audience, helping to refine your marketing strategy.
• Unlike total page views, unique page views filter out repeats by the same user, providing a clearer picture of your website performance.
• A high bounce rate indicates that visitors to your website do not resonate with the content. Suggesting that you may need to revisit the content on your website to ensure users are engaged.