What the numbers mean
Every metric in the product has one exact definition, and most confusion about analytics is really confusion about definitions. Here they are, with the benchmarks to judge them against.
Traffic: users, sessions, pageviews
Users are unique visitors in the window: anyone who fired at least one event counts once. Sessions are visit periods: 30 minutes of idle time starts a new session, and the same person visiting on two days counts as two sessions. Pageviews count every page view, refreshes included, so pageviews are always at least as high as sessions.
An engaged session is one that lasted at least 10 seconds, saw at least 2 pageviews, or produced a conversion. Anything less is a bounce, and bounce rate is simply 1 minus the engagement rate.
Average session duration is seconds per session, not per pageview. Under 30 seconds usually means landing-page-only traffic, or bots that slipped through.
Judging engagement and conversion
Engagement rate is engaged sessions divided by total sessions. Under 40% is weak, 40 to 60% is normal, over 60% is strong.
For conversion on paid traffic, the rubric is blunt: under 1% is a landing page problem, over 3% is strong. And engagement under 30% on paid traffic means the ad promised something the page did not deliver; fix the match between the ad and the page before touching the budget.
On raw traffic volume: a new site with no marketing should celebrate any traffic at all. Once you are actively marketing, 1,000 or more users a month is the small-business benchmark to aim for.
Money: gross, net, MRR, AOV
Gross is the total collected from buyers before any deductions, the headline number. Net is what actually lands in your account after fees and refunds, the number that matters for cashflow.
MRR, monthly recurring revenue, is the sum of your active subscriptions expressed monthly: an annual subscription counts as its price divided by 12, and one-time orders are excluded entirely.
AOV, average order value, is sales divided by paid order count. Watch it for outliers: one big order can skew the average and make a normal week look like a trend.
When the numbers argue with each other
Net lower than gross is not a leak, it is the math: gross minus refunds minus platform fee minus processing fee equals net. Walk that chain before assuming money went missing. Note also that the payment processor keeps its processing fee on a refund, so every refund is a small net loss.
AOV looks low? Check whether promo codes or freebies are inflating the paid order count; free and heavily discounted orders drag the average down without meaning your pricing failed.
Meta and GA4 disagreeing on conversions is expected: Meta credits the ad click, GA4 credits the last touch, and a 10 to 30% gap between them is normal. When any single number looks impossible rather than merely disappointing, reread its definition first. Most analytics emergencies dissolve on contact with the definition.
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