Occam's Razor Blog, by Avinash Kaushik, 19 Apr 2010
Web Analytics 101:
Definitions:
Goals, Metrics,
KPIs, Dimensions, Targets
It is surprising how often these "simple" things come up.
- "What is the difference between a metric and a key performance indicator (KPI)?"
- "What is a dimension in analytics?"
- "What is segmentation?"
- "Are goals metrics?"
There seems to be genuine confusion about the simplest, most foundational, parts of web metrics / analytics. So in this short post let's try and see if we can fix this really basic problem.
Definitions and standard perspectives on these terms will be covered in this post:
1. Business Objectives
2. Goals
3. Metrics
4. Key Performance Indicators
5. Targets
6. Dimensions
7. Segments
A standard definition will be provided, but more than that my hope is to solidify your understanding with concrete examples and pictures.
The post will end with a "Web Analytics Measurement Framework" - a very lofty name for something that will help you put your understanding of this post into practice.
Read more.