Traffic metrics

• Users — how many distinct people visited (Google estimates this from browser/device fingerprints). Good range: depends entirely on your industry. Track the trend, not the absolute number.
• New users — first-time visitors during the period. Good for measuring marketing reach.
• Returning users — visitors who'd been here before. High returning % = strong audience loyalty.
• Sessions — visits. One person = many sessions over time.
• Engaged sessions — visits that lasted >10s, had 2+ pages, or triggered a conversion. This is the most honest 'real visits' number GA4 has.

Engagement metrics

• Engagement rate — the share of sessions that were 'engaged'. A healthy site is usually 50–70%. Below 40% is a problem; above 80% often means your tracking is configured to over-count.
• Average engagement time — average seconds spent per session. >1 minute is good for content sites, >30s is fine for landing pages.
• Bounce rate — the inverse of engagement rate. The number is rarely actionable on its own; look at engagement rate instead.
• Views per session — how many pages an average visitor sees. Higher = stickier site.

Acquisition metrics

• Channel — the bucket your traffic came from. The standard ones: Organic Search, Direct, Paid Search, Organic Social, Paid Social, Email, Referral, Display.
• Source — the specific origin (e.g. 'google', 'instagram.com', 'twitter').
• Medium — how they arrived (e.g. 'organic', 'cpc', 'referral').
• Landing page — the first page they hit. The pages that show up here most often are your real homepage in Google's eyes.

Conversion metrics

• Conversions — count of times someone did an action you flagged as valuable. You define what counts.
• Conversion rate — conversions ÷ sessions. 1–3% is normal for e-commerce; 5–10%+ is normal for high-intent forms (contact, demo, free trial).
• Revenue — total $ from purchases (if e-commerce tracking is wired up).
• Average purchase revenue — revenue ÷ purchasers. Track this over time, not absolutely.

Numbers you'll see but can mostly ignore

• Event count — every interaction (page view, scroll, click) is an event. The raw total is meaningless out of context.
• Total revenue vs. purchase revenue — different aggregations of the same underlying number. Pick one and stick with it.
• Item views vs. product views — used in e-commerce reports; refer to the same thing.