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Key Metrics

The metrics bar at the top of your dashboard displays six essential numbers that tell the story of your website's performance. Each metric is calculated using privacy-first methods without cookies or persistent identifiers.

Unique Visitors​

What it measures: The estimated number of distinct people who visited your site during the selected period.

How it's calculated: Ovyxa uses a 24-hour rolling window that combines a truncated IP hash (salted and ephemeral), user agent family, and country code. This hash is kept in memory only and never persisted to disk, making it impossible to track individuals across days or sites.

When to use it:

  • Measure your actual audience size
  • Track growth trends over weeks or months
  • Compare campaign effectiveness (unique reach vs. repeat visits)

Interpretation tips:

  • A unique visitor who returns on different days counts once per day
  • This is an estimate, not an exact count - privacy-preserving methods trade precision for anonymity
  • Higher than pageviews means very low engagement; lower is normal

Example: 2,450 unique visitors in the last 30 days means approximately 2,450 different people accessed your site, with some potentially visiting multiple times.

Pageviews​

What it measures: The total number of pages loaded on your site.

How it's calculated: Every time someone loads a page or navigates in a single-page application (SPA), it counts as one pageview. Duplicate sends (from network retries) are deduplicated using an idempotency key.

When to use it:

  • Understand total content consumption
  • Measure engagement depth (combined with pages/visit)
  • Track the impact of content marketing campaigns

Interpretation tips:

  • Should always be higher than unique visitors (unless you have extremely high bounce rates)
  • Sudden spikes might indicate viral content or bot traffic
  • Steady growth with stable unique visitors means better engagement

Example: 15,680 pageviews from 2,450 unique visitors = ~6.4 pages per visitor on average.

Bounce Rate​

What it measures: The percentage of visits where someone viewed only one page before leaving.

How it's calculated: A "bounce" happens when a session contains exactly one pageview with no other interactions. This is calculated at the session level, not the visitor level.

When to use it:

  • Identify pages that fail to engage visitors
  • Measure landing page effectiveness
  • Detect content quality issues

Interpretation tips:

  • 50-70% is normal for blogs and content sites
  • 26-40% is good for service/product sites
  • Below 20% might indicate tracking issues or bot filtering problems
  • Above 90% suggests poor content-audience fit or technical issues

Example: A bounce rate of 62% means that in 62% of all sessions, visitors left after viewing just one page. This isn't inherently bad - someone finding the answer to their question immediately is a success.

Visit Duration​

What it measures: The average time visitors spend on your site per session, in seconds.

How it's calculated: Measured as the time between the first and last pageview in a session. Single-page visits have a duration of 0 seconds (we can't measure time spent on the last page).

When to use it:

  • Gauge content engagement depth
  • Identify highly engaging pages or sections
  • Measure the effectiveness of internal linking

Interpretation tips:

  • 0-30 seconds - Bounces or quick scans
  • 1-2 minutes - Normal for straightforward content
  • 3-5 minutes - Good engagement, multiple pages
  • 10+ minutes - Deep engagement or documentation reading

Important note: This metric undercounts actual time spent because it can't measure time on the final page of a visit. A visitor who reads one page for 5 minutes will show 0 seconds duration.

Example: An average visit duration of 3 minutes 24 seconds (204 seconds) suggests visitors are engaging with multiple pieces of content.

Visits (Sessions)​

What it measures: The number of individual sessions or browsing periods.

How it's calculated: A session begins with the first pageview and ends after 30 minutes of inactivity. If a visitor returns after 30 minutes of inactivity, it counts as a new visit.

When to use it:

  • Understand how often people return to your site
  • Calculate true engagement metrics (pages per visit, duration per visit)
  • Measure campaign frequency and repeat traffic

Interpretation tips:

  • Should be higher than unique visitors if people visit multiple times
  • The ratio of visits/unique visitors shows average visit frequency
  • Sessions from different days count separately, even for the same person

Example: 3,120 visits from 2,450 unique visitors means visitors came back an average of 1.27 times during the period.

Pages per Visit​

What it measures: The average number of pages viewed during each session.

How it's calculated: Total pageviews divided by total visits.

When to use it:

  • Measure content depth and site stickiness
  • Evaluate internal linking effectiveness
  • Identify navigation issues

Interpretation tips:

  • 1.0-2.0 - Visitors find what they need quickly, or poor engagement
  • 2.0-4.0 - Normal for most sites
  • 4.0-8.0 - Good engagement, effective internal linking
  • 8.0+ - Excellent for documentation, poor if users are lost

Example: 5.03 pages per visit means the average visitor views about 5 pages during their session - a sign of healthy engagement and effective navigation.

Using Metrics Together​

The real power comes from analyzing metrics in combination:

  • High bounce rate + low pages/visit = Landing page or content quality problem
  • High unique visitors + low pageviews = Acquisition working, retention isn't
  • Low visit duration + high pages/visit = Users clicking around but not reading (navigation issues?)
  • Increasing visitors + stable bounce rate = Healthy growth
  • Decreasing visitors + improving pages/visit = You're losing traffic but engaging core audience better

Comparison Mode​

Enable comparison mode to see how each metric changed versus:

  • The previous period (same length)
  • The same period last year

Green arrows (↑ +X%) indicate growth, red arrows (↓ -X%) indicate decline. Context matters - a higher bounce rate isn't always bad if duration also increased.

Privacy & Accuracy​

All metrics are calculated using aggregated data only:

  • No individual user profiles
  • No cross-site tracking
  • No persistent identifiers
  • No fingerprinting — cookieless mode available

This privacy-first approach means metrics are estimates rather than exact counts, but they're accurate enough for all practical decision-making while respecting visitor privacy completely.