analytics-dictionary / term / tracking & measurement

Vanity metric

A vanity metric looks impressive but does not help you make decisions, such as total page views or follower counts.

Written by Reflective Data experts · updated Oct 5, 2026

They go up and to the right easily, and rarely tell you what to do next. Actionable metrics, like conversion rate or retention, are tied to behaviour you can change.

A good test: if the number changed, would you act differently?

Conversion rate KPI (key performance indicator)Metric

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Event parameter

A parameter is an extra piece of information attached to an event, such as a product…

organic-search.md

Organic search

Organic search is traffic from unpaid results on search engines.

matomo.md

Matomo

Matomo is an open-source web analytics platform, available self-hosted or as a cloud service, with a…

engagement-rate.md

Engagement rate

Engagement rate is the share of sessions that were engaged, meaning they lasted long enough, included…

session.md

Session

A session is a group of user interactions on your site or app within a given…

conversion.md

Conversion

A conversion is a visitor completing a valuable action, such as buying, signing up or requesting…

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