A

Abandonment Rate

For a scenario or multi-step process, the percentage of initiated scenarios that were not completed during the visit.  Scenarios can be defined many ways-for example, the entire shopping process, a finite checkout process at an e-commerce site, a registration process at a lead generation site, or a search process at an information site.

Acknowledgement Page

A page that is displayed after a visitor completes an action or transaction: for example, a Thank-you or Receipt Page.  An Acknowledgement Page is often important in Scenario Analysis, where it is an indicator of competed scenario.

Ad Campaign

A specific effort to attract visitors to your site through ads.  It may be one individual ad or a coordinated set of ads treated as one entity for reporting purposes.  On the web, ad campaigns usually consist of e-mails, graphics on other sites or on a wirelesss interactive appliance, and traditional media such as direct mail, print, broadcast, outdoor advertising, etc.  In Webtrends, ad campaigns are set up by the reporting administrator with a unique URL/landing page, a starting date, an ending date, and a cost.  Same as Campaign and Marketing Campaign.

Authenticated User

A visitor who used a username-password login process to get access to all or part of a web site.  The username (but not the password) is captured in a specific field in web site log files or through client-side data collection tags.  Since it is possible for many different unique visitors to have the same Internet Protocol address, authenticated username is perhaps the most accurate way to count unique visitors.  You many find more authenticated user names than total visitors because several persons may be using the same IP address; this is particularly common on corporate intranets where a larger number of visitors are sharing a smaller pool of IP addresses.

B

Banner, Banner Ad

An online advertising, usually a graphic, which can be anywhere on a web page but typically refers to a horizontally elongated graphic of significant size located at the top or bottom of a web page.

Bookmark

In a browser, a shortcut to a web site page that is created by the visitor to allow a quick-one-click return to the page in the future.  Bookmarks are called “Favorites” in some browsers.  Visitors arriving at a site by clicking on a bookmark will appear as a “Direct Traffic” entry in Refferers reports.

Browser

A program-such as Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape- used to locate and view web pages as well as to follow hyperlinks.  The Browser is identified in the “Agent” or “User Agent” field of a web site log or through standard client-side data collection tags.

C

Campaign

A specific advertising effort to attract visitors to your site.  A campaign may be one individual ad or a coordinated set of ads treated as one entity for reporting purposes.  For online channels, campaigns usually consist of e-mails, graphics on another site or on a wireless interactive appliance, and traditional media such as direct mail, print, broadcast, outdoor advertising, etc.  In Webtrends, campaigns are set up by the reporting administrator with a unique URL/landing page, a starting date, an ending date, and a cost.  Same as Ad Campaign and Marketing Campaign. 

Campaign Creative

A “creative” describes the characteristics of marketing activity, such as color, size and messaging; for example, a “Buy Now” graphic.  These creative elements are used to encourage clickthrough to the web site.  Campaign Creative is a level within the drilldown categorization scheme set up by the Webtrends administrator, which allows for reporting on groups of campaigns in a way that is meaningful to the report users. 

Campaign Drilldown

In certain Webtrends reports, a drill-down feature allows the users to navigate from a highly summarized level of data to successively more detailed levels of data, organized along a concept hierarchy.  With Campaign Drilldown, users can examine visits, page views, revenue, average order size, and more, by Campaign Partner, Demand Channel, Marketing Program, Marketing Activity, Campaign Name, Campaign Creative, Campaign offer, and other campaign attributes.

Campaign ID

A unique campaign identifier used to calculate campaign success, cost, etc., which may involve several different marketing activities, or a single effort.  Campaign ID is a level within the drilldown categorization scheme set up by the Webtrends administrator, which allows for reporting on groups of campaigns in a way that is meaningful to the report users. 

Campaign Type

This is a user-defined category, which might include online banner ads, e-marketing newsletters, and direct mail campaigns.  Campaign Type is a level within the drilldown categorization scheme set up by the Webtrends administrator, which allows for reporting or groups of campaigns in a way that is meaningful to the report users.

Click

The act of activating a hyperlink, usually by physically pressing down (clicking) on a mouse button when the curser is over a link on a page.  In Web advertising, a click is an instance of a user activating an advertising link to go to an advertiser’s web site or page.

Click-through-Rate

The number of clicks on an ad as a percentage of the total views of the ad during the reporting period.

Client-side Data Collection

An alternative to traditional web server log file analysis that involves collecting data directly from the visitor’s browser (the client) rather than from server log files, improving data accuracy. Special script in a page’s source code is used to transmit page-level data, not “hit-level” data, to a data collection server, dramatically reducing data volume and decreasing processing time. Client side data collection obtains more accurate information than log files do – by accurately tracking visitor activity normally hidden by browser’s local cache and proxy and catching servers like those used with an AOL account – as well as by collecting extra, customized data not included in normal web server log files. Accuracy is also improved since spiders do not trigger client- side tags; with log files, spiders can appear to be “real” visitors unless their activity is filtered out. However, client-side methods provide no information on server technical performance or bandwidth use. Webtrends’ proprietary client-side data collection technology is called SmartSource.

Content Group

An administrator-defined group of one ore more web pages that is treaded as one entity in certain reports such as Content Groups and Content Paths. Content Groups are created by a Webtrends administrator to group pages according to similarities that are meaningful in the context of your web site

Content Path

A consecutive sequence of two or more Content Groups viewed during a visit.

Content Group

An administrator-defined group of one ore more web pages that is treaded as one entity in certain reports such as Content Groups and Content Paths. Content Groups are created by a Webtrends administrator to group pages according to similarities that are meaningful in the context of your web site

Content Path

A consecutive sequence of two or more Content Groups viewed during a visit.

Cookie

When a user’s browser requests a page from a web site server, the server often returns a cookie, a small text file sent to a browser by a web site to be stored locally.

In its simplest form, this text file usually contains a long unique string of characters that helps the web site recognize that visitor when he / she makes subsequent page requests. One purpose of a cookie is to let the server keep track of important information through the course of a visit, such as the items added to a shopping cart by a visitor. Without a cookie, many online transactions would not be possible because the web site would not be able to associate information entered on the shipping address page with information entered on the payment page, as one example.

The browser user controls whether a browser accepts cookies or not. If the browser is set to accept cookies, Webtrends uses the cookie character string to divide the mass of page views into individual visits. If a cookie is the persistent type that is stored on the client’s hard disk, Webtrends also uses the cookie to define a visitor as either first/time or returning. Web Trends can also use the cookie to associate previous visits with a particular visitor in order to report on past purchases, lifetime value, or past response to campaigns.