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When you go to create a report or analyze your marketing metrics, does it ever feel like you are reading Swahili? Depending on the software platform you use, different terms can also mean different things. There are a lot of terms to remember, many of them are similar in meaning, and it can get confusing!

Have no fear. Your glossary is here. Here is your go-to glossary for all of those definitions that you just can't remember from both HubSpot and Google Analytics.

All interactions

This is an Attribution Report model in HubSpot that gives equal weight to every URL or source someone touched before converting.

Attribution Model

An attribution model tells HubSpot or Google Analytics how you want to weigh the importance of different touchpoints. For example, if you want every single page to be given equal weight (or credit) for the conversion, you will choose an all interactions model for HubSpot and a linear model for Google Analytics. If you want only the first page a visitor ever saw before they ultimately converted, you would choose a First interaction or First touch model. 

Attribution Report

Attribution Reports allow marketers to create advanced reports by URL, Source, or Referrer to better understand what marketing efforts lead to conversions throughout the funnel. For more details on HubSpot's Attribution Reports, see this article. For more information on Google Analytic's Attribution models, see this article.

Bounce Rate

A percentage that shows the number of visits when users leave your site after visiting just one page.

Channel Grouping

The grouping of traffic sources that allow you to group marketing activities together. Using the Acquisition Reports, you can view and compare metrics by channel name, traffic source, medium, or campaign name.

Companies Property

Companies Properties contain important information about the contact's company, such as the company name and the website URL. 

Contact-to-Customer Conversion Rate

The number of customers divided by contacts for the selected time period.

Contacts

A contact is someone who has submitted a form on your website. Contacts can be in different Lifecycle Stages such as lead, marketing qualfied lead, customer and evangelist.

Contacts Property

Contacts Properties contain important information about the individual, such as the contact's name, email, and address.

Content Grouping

The ability to view and compare metrics that have been aggregated by content groups, individual URLs, page titles, or screen names.

Conversion Rate

The number of people who converted on your website (typically filling out a form or another action you have defined) divided by the number of people who visited your website.

Conversion Type

This is the date that someone in your database converted. For example, you could select "Became a Lead Date" to figure out when your visitor turned into a lead. You could select "Became a Customer Date" to figure out when your lead turned into a customer.

Cookies

A small piece of data that is stored in a user's browser. Cookies are used to track how many times a website is visited.

Dimension

A characteristic of your data. In Google Analytics some default dimensions include browser, landing page, and campaign.

Direct Traffic

When someone visits your site by directly typing in a URL. For example, if I open Chrome or Safari and type in "http://hubspot.com," that would count as direct traffic.

Events

Events allow you to measure a website visitor's activity on your website. In HubSpot, Events can be created without any code using the Events bookmarklet to track a user's behavior on your website. To read more about HubSpot's Events, see this blog post.

Filter

A setting that allows you to alter the data that is deplayed in your reports. If you have a report with page URLs and only want to see the URLs from your blog, you should type in blog.YOURCOMPANY.com to view only your blog posts. The process of only showing these posts is filtering.

First Interaction

This is an Attribution Report model in Google Analytics that gives 100% credit to the first touchpoint before a conversion.

First Touch

This is an Attribution Report model in HubSpot that gives 100% of the credit to the first URL or source visited by a contact on your site.

First and Last Interaction

This is an Attribution Report model in HubSpot that gives 50% of the credit for the conversion to the first URL and 50% of the credit for the conversion to the last URL.

First and Last Touch

This is an Attribution Report model in HubSpot that gives 50% of the credit for the conversion to the first referring URL or source and 50% of the credit for the conversion to the last referring URL or source.

Interaction Score

The interaction score is in HubSpot and tells the Attribution Report what data to look at as well as what Attribution model to use in the analysis. For example, the Attribution Report can be pulled by URL, referrer, or source. And then the different model can be chosen.

Last AdWords Click

This is an Attribution Report model in Google Analytics that gives 100% of the credit for the conversion to the last AdWords click.

Last Interaction

This is an Attribution Report model in HubSpot that gives 100% of the credit to the URL someone converted on.

Last Non-Direct Click

This is an Attribution Report model in Google Analytics that gives 100% of the credit for the conversion to the last channel a customer clicked through before converting. All direct traffic is ignored in this model.

Last Touch

This is an Attribution Report model in HubSpot that gives 100% of the credit for the conversion to the last channel or URL someone went to in the session before they converted.

Lifecycle Stage

A property that shows where contacts are in your marketing funnel. In HubSpot these lifecycle stages include Subscriber, Lead, Marketing Qualified Lead, Sales Qualified Lead, Opportunity, Customer, Evangelist, and Other.

Linear

This is an Attribution Report model in Google Analytics that gives each touchpoint in the conversion path equal credit for the conversion. In HubSpot, this is called all interactions.

List Segmentation

The ability to group contacts based on similarities. For example, you can group people based on similar contact or companies properties, form submissions, email actions, pages views, and more. For more details on how to do this in HubSpot, see this blog post.

Organic Search

When a visitor originates from a search engine. This includes but is not limited to Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

Pageview

When a page is loaded or reloaded.

Paid Search

When a visitor originates from any paid advertisement.

Position Based

This is an Attribution model in Google Analytics that gives 40% of the credit to the first and last interaction and 20% of the credit distributed evently to the middle interactions.

Referrals

When a visitor originates from other websites.

Revenue Report

A revenue report attributes company revenue to different marketing activities. For example, you can run a revenue report based on how much revenue your email marketing or social media efforts have generated.

Segments

Sessions

Score

In HubSpot Attribution Models, each URL or source is given a score based on its value. A high score means that the URL or source drives more conversions whereas a low score means that the URL or source is not driving a lot of conversions. The score is calculated based on the Attribution model you select. For more information on scores, see this article.

Simple Decay

This is an Attribution Report model in HubSpot that gives the six most recent interactions credit for the conversion. For example, if you visited seven pages before converting to a lead, it would give credit to the final six pages you visited. Page seven would get 50% more credit than page six. Page six would get 50% more credit than page five. And so on.

Time Decay

This is an Attribution model in Google Analytics that gives the touchpoints that were closest in time to the conversion to get more credit. In HubSpot, the most similar model is Simple Decay, but this doesn't take time into consideration.

Touchpoints

Touchpoints are the different interactions someone has with your company. Touchpoints include but are not limited to the different pages viewed along a visitor's journey on your website.

Traffic

Visitors to your website.

Unique Visitors

A brand new visitor coming to your website for the first time.

Visit-to-Contact Conversion Rate

The number of new contacts divided by the number of visits for the selected time period.

Visit-to-Customer Conversion Rate

The number of Customers divided by the number of visits for the selected time period.

Visitors

The unique browsers that visit your website or mobile app.

Visits

Any time a visitor reaches your site from an outside domain. A visit will end in HubSpot when someone leaves your domain by visiting an external site or closing their browser. A visit will end in Google Analytics after a user is inactive for 30 minutes or more.

What other metrics do you think should be in the glossary?