Accenture Digital Skills:

Web Analytics
Glossary

Word / Phrase Definition

Abandoned cart A metric which shows what percentage of a website's users

rate signal purchase intent by adding an item to the cart, but don't
complete the purchase.
A/B/n testing An extension of A/B testing in which multiple versions of a page
are compared (n refers to the number of versions).

Actionable Refers to information that allows a decision to be made or

action to be taken, improving business performance.

Adobe Analytics An online tool offered by Adobe that measures and reports
website activity & performance. Features include; data
visualisation tools (dashboards), email-based sharing and
communication, and the ability to add other Adobe products.
Analysis A detailed examination of data and facts to understand how
they are related to each other, informing problem solving and
decision making.
Analytics The study of data to understand the effects of certain decisions
or events, to predict how they might turn out in the future and
to influence future behaviours. This allows businesses to
evaluate and improve their performance.
Artificial Refers to the ways in which machines are programmed to think
Intelligence (AI) and act like humans.

Benchmarking An established point of reference against which something can

be measured in order to compare performance or reliability.
• ‘Internal’ benchmarking is setting expectations based on
a businesses’ own historical performance.
• ‘External’ benchmarking is adding context to data by
comparing it with data from the competitors in a
businesses’ industry. This allows businesses to
understand how well they are performing and recognise
areas that may need improvement.

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Big data analytics The process of examining large amounts of data in volume or
range to uncover hidden patterns, correlations, trends,
customer preferences and other useful business information.
Bounce rate Represents the percentage of visitors who enter the site and
then leave rather than continuing to view other pages within the
same site or take an action.
Brand awareness The familiarity of consumers with a particular product or
service.

Campaign A planned series of actions or strategies that aim to achieve a

specific goal. For example, a social media campaign is a
marketing effort to increase website traffic or improve brand
engagement.
Channel A means of conveying or transmitting information or
communication. A channel can be a website/application or
even different devices. For example, websites which display
company advertising are digital marketing channels enabling a
company to share information about their products and
services with their customers.
Checkout A metric that refers to the percentage of shoppers who begin
completion rate the checkout process, then complete it, over a given period.

Click through rate A metric that measures the ratio of clicks on a specific link to
the number of total users who view a page, email, or
advertisement.
Competitive The ways that a company can produce goods or deliver services
advantage better than its competitors.

Conversion The point at which an audience that receives marketing

messaging completes a desired action. For example, a website
conversion could be a measure of the number of visitors that
make a purchase on the website.
Conversion funnel The process that takes potential customers on a journey
towards buying a company’s products or services.

Conversion rate The percentage of users who take a desired action. This is
calculated by dividing the number of website visits by the
number of conversions.
Conversion rate The process of optimising a website or app to increase
optimisation conversion rates.

Conversion This describes the different stages in a buyer’s journey leading

journey up to a purchase, from first becoming aware of the brand to the
moment they make a purchase and beyond.

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Customer The impression customers have of a brand as a whole
experience throughout their customer journey.

Customer lifetime A metric showing the total amount of money a customer is

value expected to spend with a business, during their lifetime.

Customer loyalty A measure of a customer's likeliness to do repeat business with

a company or brand.

Customer A metric that measures the number of customers a company

retention rate retains over a given period of time.

Customer A measurement that determines how happy customers are with

satisfaction a company's products, services, and capabilities.

Customer segment Different sets of people who are grouped together based on
shared characteristics. This could be gender, age, geographical
location, behaviour, etc.
Dashboard A type of data visualisation which shows information
represented clearly and concisely in the form of graphs, charts,
and tables.
Data Facts and statistics collected for reference or analysis.

Dataset A collection of related data that has separate elements but can
be managed as a whole. In a database, for example, a dataset
might contain a collection of business data such as employee
names, salaries, and contact information.
Data stream A set of digital signals which transfer information and data from
a source (website or app) to a destination.

Descriptive A form of advanced analytics which examines data or content

analytics to answer the question “What has happened?” Descriptive
analytics is useful because it allows us to learn from past
behaviours.
Diagnostic A form of advanced analytics which examines data to answer
analytics the question “Why did it happen?”. This is characterised by
techniques such as drill-down, data discovery, data mining and
correlations.
Digital Used to describe how businesses are changing the way they
operate to reflect emerging technologies and increasing
connectivity to the people and objects around. Digital enables
people and businesses to transmit and store data/information
and apply this to improve performance.

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Dimension A qualitative (descriptive) characteristic of data. This can
describe characteristics of users (e.g., gender, age, country) or
characteristics of user actions or events (e.g., device model,
browser, page name).
Dynamic content Refers to web content that changes based on the behaviour,
preferences, and interests of the user. This is used to help
hyper-personalise the customer experience.
E-commerce Stands for electronic commerce which is the buying and selling
of goods and services online.

Goal What a business anticipates achieving in a set period of time to

meet the objectives set.

Google Analytics An online tool offered by Google that measures and reports
website activity & performance. Features include; data
visualisation tools (dashboards), email-based sharing and
communication, and the ability to add other Google products.
Hyper- Uses data to create experiences that are unique to specific
personalisation individuals rather than groups of individuals.

Insight The ability to have a clear and deep understanding of a

complicated problem.

Key performance A measurable value that helps evaluate progress towards a

indicator (KPI) goal. For example, a KPI for measuring the success of a social
media campaign may include the number of likes, shares or
mentions that the campaign receives.
Landing page A webpage that is displayed when a potential customer clicks
an advertisement or a search engine result link.

Machine learning A subfield of artificial intelligence, which is broadly defined as

the capability of a machine to imitate humans.

Macro-conversion The completion of an activity which is important to the success

of the business, measured against their main objective. For an
ecommerce site, this might be order completion.
Marketing Activities a company undertakes to promote the buying or
selling of a product or service.

Measurement plan A document that contains the description of the strategy and
tactics a business will use to achieve the objectives laid out in
the mission statement. It will also include information such as
the key performance indicators a business will measure and
how they intend to segment their customer base.

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Metric A quantitative standard of measurement, providing a business
with a more numerical view of their users.

Micro-conversion The completion of an activity which is of less importance for a

business than the primary, macro conversion. This may include
activities such as account creations or sign-ups for an email
newsletter. For example, a visitor to a website may complete a
micro conversion such as creating a new account before they
complete a macro conversion such as ordering a product.
Multivariate testing A testing method where several variables on a page are
modified (e.g., headline, image), and all variations are tested
against each other.
Net promoter A method of using a single survey question to gauge customer
score satisfaction with a product, with a score range from -100 to
+100.
Objective Something a business plans to do or achieve. Goals, KPIs and
strategies are based on the objectives a business set.

Order value The total amount spent each time a customer places an order
on a website or mobile app. Businesses normally work out the
average order value which is the average amount spent each
time a customer places an order.
Organic search This is the process of showing up higher on the search engine
results pages (SERPs) naturally. Organic search is one of the
most effective channels to gain traffic or conversions because
it’s free in contrast to paid search.
Parameter A quantity or number on which some other quantity or number
depends.

Personalisation The method of tailoring a service or a product to accommodate

specific individuals, sometimes tied to groups or segments of
individuals.
Predictive analytics The process of using statistics and forecasting techniques to
get information from data to recognise patterns and predict
future outcomes and trends. This form of analytics aims to
answer the question “What could happen?”.
Prescriptive A relatively new field of analytics which examines data to
analytics predict what will happen and to suggest the optimal actions
required to make a desired decision. It aims to answer
questions such as, “What should be done?” or “What can we do
to bring about a certain result?”.
Qualitative data Information that describes something, e.g., the gender or hair
colour of customers. This type of data is useful to find out what
people think or feel about a task and it is generally more

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 difficult to analyse and draw conclusions from than quantitative
data as the data is not always comparable.

Quantitative data Any kind of data that can be measured and represented with
numbers. For example, quantitative data is used to measure
things precisely, such as the number of sales or the average
customer lifetime value.
Real-time If a process or action is done in real-time, it will occur in the
actual time, without noticeable delay between the action being
triggered and completed. For example, if a computer system
updates information at the same rate as it receives data, this
system is acting in real-time.
Reporting A written summary of data or information to represent business
progress against budget, schedule, and scope.

Revenue The money that a company receives from selling goods or

services.

Sales The exchange of a good or service for money.

Segmentation A marketing strategy which involves dividing a broad target

market into smaller groups with common needs interests, and
priorities, allowing a business to create a strategy to specifically
target them. For example, a business may segment data based
on consumer purchasing behaviour, demographics, or
geographical location.
Session The number of times any user visits a website.

Strategy A plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or overall aim.

Tactic A plan or action carried out as part of an overall strategy

intended to achieve a particular goal.
Target Benchmarks that set a clear target for a business to achieve in
the short and long term.

Traffic The number of people visiting a particular website or app.

Trend A general direction in which something is developing or

changing.

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Upsell A technique which businesses use to persuade a customer to
buy something additional or more expensive.

User A person who uses or operates something.

Visit A metric used to measure the total number of times a user

navigates to a website.

Visualisation The representation of an object, situation, or information as a

chart or other image. Several visualisations are built to create a
dashboard.
Web Analytics The tracking, reviewing, and reporting data to measure web
activity, including the use of a website and its components,
such as webpages, images and videos.
Website rank The position of a website or page in a list of search engine
results. The higher the rank, the more likely a user will visit the
website.

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