Why Marketers have Trouble with Some Basic Analytics Definitions and How To Fix That.

The Issue with Analytics Definitions

Marketers often seem to be challenged with keeping straight the differences between Unique Visitors, Visits and Pageviews when it comes to Adobe Analytics (they have the same issue with Google Analytics but I’ll cover that in another article as the terminology is a little different).

Why Is This?

At the heart of this challenge is the way many analytics analysts, using Adobe Analytics, define and explain these terms using technical definitions. Not only that but the explanation is often followed up with a laundry list of caveats of when this or that applies or does not apply.?

What marketers, who rely on Adobe Analytics, need to know and understand is the central core of what they are looking at.?Once that is achieved, they will have a much better view into the reports they are looking at. The technical jargon and caveats are important to understand but only following grasping the core definitions.

Let’s Fix This

?Analogy for Reporting Period, Unique Visitors, Visits and Pageviews

A good way to think about these four definitions in Adobe Analytics (Reporting Period, Unique Visitors, Visits and Pageviews) is with a brick-and-mortar analogy.

Scenario

• Imagine that John owns a store.?
• The store is open during the workweek, Monday to Friday
• In this case, we are looking at Monday, August 1st to Friday, August 5th?
• Avi and Bob are colleagues who frequent the store
• Every day, Avi comes to the store twice; once in the morning to buy self-service coffee and once in the afternoon to buy a snack.?
• On Wednesday Avi always picked up and looked at the latest editions of a weekly news magazine and a daily newspaper.
• Bob also comes to the store one time each day in the morning for self-service coffee.
• Avi and Bob both enter the front of the store each time they visit.
• Avi and Bob both exit at the cashier station
• Avi and Bob were the only two people who came into the store this Monday to Friday (Aug 1 to Aug 5).

Break Down Using Adobe Analytics Terminology

Reporting Period

• August 1 to 5

1. The Reporting Period puts boundaries on how Unique Visitors, Visits and Pageviews are counted.
2. The data collected is confined to what was collected within the period.
3. Reporting Period is an important concept when it comes to understanding Unique Visitors (see Unique Visitors below)

Unique Visitors

• Two Unique Visitors

1. Avi and Bob are both Unique and both Visitors to the store, so we have just two Unique Visitors for this Reporting Period (remember they are the only two people to go into the store this Reporting Period).
2. Both Avi and Bob did come to the store every day making multiple Visits but they are still only two Unique Visitors
3. Adobe Analytics deduplicates Visitors within the Reporting Period (aka date boundaries ) so Avi and Bob are only counted once each under the headline of Unique Visitor, despite making multiple Visits to the store.
4. If we expanded the Reporting Period to 30 days (versus the current five) and Avi and Bob still were the only people to enter the store (no matter how many times) the number of Unique Visitors would remain at two.
5. Also Known As: Uniques, Visitors

Visits

• 15 Visits

1. Each time Avi and Bob entered the store constitutes an individual Visit.
2. Between the two of them, they came into the store 15 times during the week (Reporting Period Aug 1 to Aug 5).
3. You can think of counting Visits as if people had to come into the store through a turnstile with a counter. Every time someone comes into the store the turnstile counts them. Avi and Bob, combined, went through the turnstile 15 times making 15 Visits.
4. Also Known As: Session, User Session, Hit (Erroneously)

Pageviews

• 47 Pageviews

1. In this brick-and-mortar analogy, interacting with products and moving to different parts of the store equates to someone seeing pages on your website or in other words Pageviews.
2. If we count what products Avi and Bob interacted with and what parts of the store they were in during the Reporting Period, we see Avi had:

• 10 “front of store” Pageviews
• 5 “self-service coffee” Pageviews
• 5 “snack” Pageviews
• 1 “weekly news magazine” Pageview
• 1 “daily newspaper” Pageview
• 10 “cashier/side exit” Pageviews

Bob had

• 5 “front of store” Pageviews
• 5 “self-service coffee” Page Views
• 5 “cashier/side exit” Pageviews

Reporting Summary

• Reporting Period: August 1 to August 5
• Unique Visitors: 2
• Visits: 15
• Pageviews: 47

When marketers have a solid understanding of the core definitions, Adobe Analytics reports will be far more valuable to them.?

This article was originally published on AllThingsInteractive.com ?