Key Terms

Terminology can be scary, especially if you’re switching platforms or if this is your first time trying out an analytics product. To simplify the learning curve, we put together a small but comprehensive list of key terms that will make navigating the

Visitors

A visitor is a person who lands on your website for the first time on a specific device. This first visit counts as a unique visit. Pretty straightforward, right? Let’s take it one step further.

You may also have noticed the term “Returning” on the graph. Returning stands for the number of visitors that come back to your site at a later time. If a person visits your site today and they repeat their visit tomorrow, they are recorded as Returning.

Sources

Your visitors come from somewhere, and that somewhere is what we call the source - basically, the website that redirected them to one of your pages. Sources are important because they drive audience to you. We group these sites under “External”, and by clicking on the Referrers filter, you will be able to see their individual URLs.

There is a chance your visitors landed on your website by typing your URL in their browser - in which case, hooray, you’re popular! Every time this happens, it is registered in our Sources as “Direct”.

The “Search” list is where we record search engine referrals, for example, when your visitors found and clicked on your site through Google or Bing, while “Social” results are hits to your website that originated from a Twitter or Facebook post, or any other social platform. Lastly, “Email” stands for traffic sent to you from an email client, such as Gmail or Thunderbird.

Content

The Content report is a collection of the most visited pages on your site. The Entries and Exits filters allow you to gain a better perspective on the first, and accordingly, last pages your visitor view on your site.

Countries

The Countries report helps you see your visitors’ locations. Next to the list of countries, you will find the views counter - this way, you will always know which country accounts for the most visits.

Vessels

Your visitors use all kinds of devices to get to you. This is what we lovingly call “Vessels”. We have further split them into Devices, Browsers, Operating Systems and Languages, so you can better understand user experience and tailor accordingly across platforms and screens. You can refine your Vessels results by clicking on the corresponding filter.

Performace Variants

Our Performance Variants are parameters we use to determine where traffic is coming from. If you’ve had some experience with Analytics before, they might seem familiar to you - that’s because they are! Performance Variants are more commonly known as UTMs (Urchin Tracking Modules), we just gave them a spiffy new name. These small parts of text are included in URLs and help us identify the origins of your incoming traffic, whether that may be a paid ad campaign, newsletter or social media links. Being aware of the Variants makes it easier for you to decide which content is more relevant to your audience, so you can push it forward.

Events

Whenever your visitors perform an action on your site, it is logged as an Event. For example, the “add to cart” action or clicking on a link are typical Events, and Proxima records and categorizes them all, to help you gauge the interaction between your visitors and your site. Events are valuable pieces of information, because they let you in on visitor habits and behaviors when they use your product.