Google Analytics- Glossary (Metrics& Dimensions)

    Dimension: A dimension is the attribute of visitors to your website —> a dimension describes data.

For example let’s say a man aged between 25-34 from ‘London’ visited your website after clicking on an organic search listing on Google which he found by searching for the keyword ‘attribution modelling’.

Let us also assume that he visited your website via a chrome browser which is installed on a desktop computer which runs windows.

Now following are the attributes of the visitor to your website along with their values:

Gender – male
Age – 25-34
City – London
Source / Medium – Google / Organic
Keyword – Attribution Modelling
Browser – Chrome
Device Category – desktop
Operating System – Windows

Here,
Gender, Age, City, Source /Medium, Keyword, Browser, Device Category and Operating System are all labelled as dimensions in Google Analytics because they are the characteristics of your website users.

Metrics: Metric is a number which is used to measure one of the characteristics of a dimension. A dimension can have one or more characteristics.

For example, the characteristics of the dimension called ‘Source / Medium/age’.

    1.      Sessions

    2.      % New Sessions

    3.      Users

    4.      Returning visitor

    5.      Page view

    6.      Unique page views

    7.      Time on page

    8.      Time on Site

    9.      Bounce

   10.   Bounce Rate

   11.   Pages / Sessions

     Here, Sessions, % New Sessions, New Users, Bounce Rate, Pages / Sessions etc are all labelled as metrics in Google Analytics because they are the characteristics of the dimension called ‘Source / Medium’

·      Session: A session is defined as a group of interactions one user takes within a   given time frame on your website.

    Google Analytics defaults that time frame to 30 minutes. Meaning whatever a user does on your        website (e.g. browses pages, downloads resources, and purchases products) before they leave equals one session.

         Within 30 min-1 session

            After 30 min-2 sessions

·           Users: When user visits a site for the first time, he is recorded as the user. Google Analytics is able to recognize whether a user has been to the site before through the use of cookies. If the same user visits the site clearing cookies then they will be treated as a new user again. (Browsers like chrome, Mozilla Firefox, etc.)

·           Returning visitor:

  A visitor with existing Google analytics cookies from a previous visit.

·           Page view: How many pages viewed by a person. A page view is recorded every time a page is viewed. Or, more technically, a page view is recorded every time the Google Analytics page view tracking method is executed. When a visitor hits the back button, a page view is recorded. When a visitor hits refresh, a page view is recorded. Every time a page is opened in the browser, regardless of whether it has been cached, a page view is recorded. (Of course this assumes the tracking code is on the page in question.)

               

1. Home            2. Services

 

                                                                         No. of page views=3

                                              3

·         Unique page views: Unique page will count the actual number of the pages visit by the user.

                 1. Home            2. Services      No. of page views=2        

            

                                        3

“If history (cookies) deletes then user count is as a new user if we logged in    again”.

·      Time on page: The amount of time spends on the particular page. Time on page is measured by subtracting the time user hit on a page from the time they hit the next page.

Ex: 1^st page at 5:00pm 2^nd page at 5:05pm. Time spent on 1^st page is 5mins (5:05-5:00 pm)

·      Time on Site: This is the sum of the time on page for all page views in a session.

Ex: 1^st page 5mins 2^nd page 3mins 3rdpage –user exit. Now time on site is       8mins (5+3+0)

·      Bounce: A visit with one page view. It doesn't matter how long the visitor was on the page or how they left. Technically, it's a visit with only one interaction.

·      Bounce Rate: The percentage of visitors to a particular website who bounce back from the site after viewing only one page.

                    +Bounce rate

                    -Bounce rate

·         Pages/Sessions: Number of page views divided by total sessions.  This metric shows the average number of pages viewed per session.

·         Exit rate: As bounce rate is the percentage of people who landed on a page and immediately left. Bounces are always one page sessions.

DIMENSION	DIMENSION	METRIC	METRIC
City	Browser	Sessions	Pages/Session
San Francisco	Chrome	3,000	3.5
San Francisco	Firefox	2,000	4.1
Berlin	Chrome	2,000	5.5
Berlin	Safari	1,000	2.5
Berlin	Firefox	1,000	3.1