Read your analytics

The Analytics page answers three questions: how much traffic you had, where it came from, and what it turned into. Here's what each part shows and how to narrow it to the visitors you care about.

The top of the page

1. The period. Click it to pick Today, Yesterday, Last 7 Days, Last 28 Days, Last 90 Days, Month to Date, Last Month, Year to Date, Last 12 Months or All Time. The arrows on either side step to the earlier or later period of the same length.
2. Filters. Narrow every report on the page at once (more below).
3. Views. Your saved combinations of filters.
4. The metric tiles. Visitors, Revenue, Conversion rate, Bounce Rate and Duration, each with the change against the previous period. Click a tile and the chart plots that metric. On the Visitors chart, switch Total to New vs returning to split the line into first-time and returning visitors. Once you set up business goals, the tiles show Visitors, Pageviews, Bounce Rate and Duration instead, and your goals are reported on the project Dashboard (see Goals and funnels).
5. Observations. Badges on the chart mark days worth a look.
6. Live activity. Who's on your site right now.

Hover over the chart to see the day's numbers. The flags on the chart are the launches and changes you logged in Events, so you can tell why a line moved.

Observations: why traffic moved

ProjectHQ watches your traffic and marks unusual days on the chart: a Traffic spike or Traffic drop, a day with Nothing recorded, a single source or page sending far more visitors than usual, a New referrer, or your Best day in 90 days. A badge shows the site that caused it, such as the favicon of the referrer, or an icon for the kind of change.

Hover over a badge to read what happened in one sentence, with the usual number for comparison and, where it can tell, where the extra visitors came from and what they read.

Click a badge to drill in. The whole page switches to that day. If the observation is about one source or one landing page, that becomes a filter too. A pill in the filter row says what you're looking at. Click its × to go back to the period you came from.

Live activity

The Live activity card shows the actions on your site as they happen: pages viewed, links clicked to other sites, goals completed (with the amount, for a sale) and visitors identifying themselves. Each visitor's actions are grouped under who they are: the name or email of a visitor who has identified themselves, or an anonymous alias such as "Amber Owl" for everyone else. The green number at the top is how many people were active in the last 5 minutes. Hover over it to see who, and click anyone to open their profile.

Filter the page

Filters apply to every card on the page at the same time.

• Use the pills Channel, Country, Device and Completed goal, or click More filters to filter by landing page, page, source, campaign, region, city, browser, OS, screen size, first channel or source, UTM tags, new or returning visitors, or any property you send with your events.
• Or click any row in a report, such as a source, a page or a country, to filter by it.
• With a filter on, the Visitors tile also shows what share of all visitors match it.
• Click Clear filters to start over.

The filters are part of the page address, so you can copy the link and send someone exactly what you're looking at.

Save a view

When you have a set of filters you'll come back to:

1. Click Views, then Save this view.
2. Type a name and click Save.

Pick it from Views any time to put its filters back on. To remove one, hover over it in the list and click the trash icon.

The reports

Below the chart, the page is split into sections. Click View all (the expand icon) on a card to see the full list, with a search box.

Visitors and their profiles

The Visitors list shows people who identified themselves by name or email, and everyone else under a stable anonymous alias. The small label under each name shows how far they got through your main funnel. Use Any stage to list only people who reached a given step.

Click a visitor to open their profile: pageviews, visits, when they were first and last seen, and their activity. If the visitor is also a contact, you see their contact card and, under All time, the revenue and costs recorded for them. Read more in Manage contacts.

Count more than one domain

Analytics counts visits on the domains registered for the project. Your main domain and its www version are always included. If the same tracking script also runs on another domain or subdomain, open Analytics settings → Domains, type it under Add a domain and click +. Remove one with the trash icon next to it under Registered.

Leave out your own visits

Turn on Exclude my visits under Analytics settings → Installation → Your own visits so your own browsing doesn't count. It deletes the visits already recorded for your browser, so do it on each browser you use.

When you get close to your plan's limit

Your plan includes a number of events each month. Once you've used 80% of it, a bar at the top of the page shows your usage. On the full plan, collection continues past the limit and nothing is dropped. During the free trial and on the free plan, visits past the allowance aren't recorded. See Plans, trial and limits.