Help Center
New to analytics? No worries. Here's every term you'll see on your dashboard, explained like you're new to this — because everyone is at some point.
If something's still confusing, email us at hello@hushstats.com and we'll explain it better (and update this page).
Pageview
Every time someone loads a page on your website, that's one pageview. If the same person visits 5 pages, that's 5 pageviews. Think of it like a doorbell — every time someone walks through the door, it rings once.
Visitor (Unique Visitor)
A visitor is one person (well, one browser) visiting your site. If someone visits your site 3 times today and looks at 10 pages total, that's 1 visitor and 10 pageviews. We count visitors per day — so the same person visiting Monday and Tuesday counts as 2 visitors (one each day). This is normal for privacy-first analytics — we don't track people across days because that would require cookies.
Bounce Rate
The percentage of visitors who land on your site and leave without clicking anything else. Imagine someone walks into a shop, looks around for a second, and walks back out without touching anything — that's a bounce. A 60% bounce rate means 6 out of 10 visitors only saw one page. For a blog, 60-70% is totally normal (people read the article and leave). For a SaaS landing page, you'd want it lower.
Referrer
Where your visitor came from before they landed on your site. If someone clicks a link to your site on Twitter, the referrer is "twitter.com". If someone types your URL directly into their browser, there's no referrer — we call that "direct" traffic. This helps you understand which links and platforms are actually sending people your way.
Top Pages
The pages on your site that get the most visits. If your homepage gets 500 visits and your pricing page gets 200, they'll show up in that order. This tells you what people are actually interested in — and which pages might need more attention.
Direct Traffic
Visitors who typed your URL directly into their browser, used a bookmark, or clicked a link in an email or app that doesn't send referrer info. Basically, traffic where we can't tell where they came from. It doesn't mean anything is wrong — it's normal for a chunk of your traffic to be direct.
Device Type
Whether someone is visiting from a phone (mobile), a laptop/desktop computer, or a tablet. This matters because your site might look and work differently on a phone than on a big screen. If 80% of your visitors are on mobile, you want to make sure your mobile experience is solid.
Session
A single visit to your site. One person can have multiple sessions — if they visit your site in the morning and again in the evening, that's two sessions. We group pageviews into sessions to figure out things like bounce rate (did they look at more than one page during this visit?).
Time Range / Interval
The period of time you're looking at in your dashboard. "Today" shows data from the current day. "7d" shows the last 7 days. "30d" shows the last 30 days. Longer time ranges smooth out day-to-day spikes and give you a better sense of trends.
Tracking Script
A tiny piece of code (one line of HTML) that you add to your website. It's what tells HushStats that someone visited a page. Ours is less than 1KB — smaller than most images on your site. It doesn't set cookies, doesn't slow your site down, and doesn't collect personal data.
Site ID
A unique code that identifies your website in HushStats. When you add a site to your dashboard, we generate a Site ID. You put it in the tracking script so we know which analytics data belongs to which site. It looks something like "a0d51c8e0346750fe4cce41ce3b75936".
Cookieless / No Cookies
Traditional analytics (like Google Analytics) store a small file called a "cookie" on your visitor's computer to track them. We don't do that. No cookies means: your visitors aren't being tracked across the internet, you don't need an annoying consent popup, and you're automatically compliant with privacy laws like GDPR. The trade-off is that we can't track the same person across multiple days — but for most sites, that's fine.
GDPR
A European privacy law (General Data Protection Regulation) that says you need permission before collecting someone's personal data. Since HushStats doesn't collect personal data — no names, no emails, no IP addresses, no cookies — you're compliant automatically. No consent banner needed.
UTM Parameters
Special tags you can add to your links to track where traffic comes from. A link like "yoursite.com?utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=launch" tells your analytics that this visitor came from Twitter as part of your launch campaign. Useful for tracking which marketing efforts actually drive traffic. Available on Pro and Business plans.
Average Visit Duration
How long a visitor stays on your site during a single visit. Measured from when they first load a page to when they leave or close the tab. A 2-minute average is typical for a blog. Higher durations usually mean people are engaged with your content. Note: if someone opens your site and switches to another tab, the timer pauses — we only measure active time.
Real-Time Visitors
The number of people on your site right now (within the last 5 minutes). Shown as a green pulsing dot at the top of your dashboard. Useful for seeing the immediate impact of a social media post, newsletter send, or Product Hunt launch.
Entry Page
The first page a visitor sees when they arrive on your site. Also called a "landing page." If someone clicks a Google result that goes to your blog post, that blog post is the entry page. Knowing your top entry pages helps you understand what's attracting people to your site in the first place.
Custom Events
Actions you want to track beyond pageviews — like button clicks, form submissions, or signups. You trigger them with a simple JavaScript call: window.hushstats.event('signup', 'pro-plan'). Events show up in your Events tab with counts so you can see how many people took each action.
Outbound Link
A link on your site that goes to a different website. HushStats automatically tracks when someone clicks an outbound link, so you can see which external sites your visitors are going to. Useful for affiliate tracking or understanding user behavior.
Core Web Vitals (LCP, CLS, INP)
Google's three key metrics for measuring how fast and smooth your website feels. LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) measures loading speed — how quickly the biggest element on your page appears. Good is under 2.5 seconds. CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) measures visual stability — whether stuff jumps around as the page loads. Good is under 0.1. INP (Interaction to Next Paint) measures responsiveness — how quickly the page reacts when you click or tap something. Good is under 200ms. HushStats collects these automatically from visitors' browsers.
Scroll Depth
How far down the page your visitors scroll. Shown as a percentage — 25%, 50%, 75%, or 100%. If most visitors only reach 25%, your content at the top isn't compelling enough to keep them reading. If most reach 100%, your content is engaging. Particularly useful for long blog posts and landing pages.
Page Performance Score
A score from 0-100 that rates how well each page on your site is performing. It combines three factors: popularity (how many views it gets, 40% weight), engagement (inverse of bounce rate, 30% weight), and depth (how long people spend on it relative to 3 minutes, 30% weight). A score of 70+ is great, 40-70 is average, below 40 needs attention.
Annotation
A note you can pin to a specific date on your analytics timeline. Use annotations to mark things like product launches, blog posts, marketing campaigns, or outages. When you see a traffic spike or dip, annotations help you remember what caused it. Like a sticky note on your chart.
Stats Badge
An embeddable image that shows your live visitor count. You can put it on your website, GitHub README, or anywhere that supports images. It updates every 5 minutes and doesn't require authentication — it's a public badge. Find the embed code at the bottom of your dashboard.
Previous Period Comparison
The green or red percentage shown on each stat card (like "+12%" or "-5%"). It compares the current time range to the equivalent previous period. If you're looking at the last 7 days, it compares to the 7 days before that. Green means the metric improved, red means it declined. For bounce rate, lower is better so the colors are inverted.
Interactive Filtering
Click on any row in your dashboard lists (pages, referrers, countries, browsers, devices, etc.) to filter the entire dashboard by that value. For example, click "United States" in your countries list to see only US traffic across all metrics. Active filters show as blue pills at the top — click the X to remove them.
Channel Grouping
Traffic sources automatically grouped into categories: Direct (typed your URL), Search (Google, Bing, etc.), Social (Twitter, Reddit, etc.), Email (Gmail, Outlook, etc.), and Referral (other websites). This gives you a quick high-level view of where your traffic comes from without looking at individual referrer domains.
CSV Export
Download your analytics data as a CSV file for use in spreadsheets or other tools. Click "Export CSV" in the top right of your dashboard. The export includes time series data, top pages, referrers, countries, and browsers for the currently selected time range.
Public Dashboard
A read-only version of your analytics dashboard that anyone can view without logging in. Enable it from the "Public Dashboard" section at the bottom of your dashboard, then share the link. Useful for open-source projects, transparency pages, or sharing with clients.
Stats API
A programmatic way to access your analytics data. Available at /api/v1/stats/YOUR_SITE_ID. Requires either a valid login session or the site's public dashboard to be enabled. You can request specific metrics (counts, timeseries, pages, referrers, countries) or get a summary.
Common Questions
Why don't my visitor numbers match Google Analytics?
Two reasons. First, we count visitors differently — we use daily estimates without cookies, so the same person visiting Monday and Tuesday is 2 visitors in HushStats but might be 1 in GA (which tracks them with cookies). Second, ad blockers block Google Analytics but generally don't block privacy-first tools. So we might actually show more visitors than GA, because we see the traffic that GA misses.
My bounce rate seems high. Is that bad?
Depends on what kind of site you're running. For a blog, 60-80% is totally normal — people read the article they came for and leave. That's not a problem; they got what they needed. For a SaaS landing page, you'd want 30-50%. For an e-commerce site, aim for 20-40%. Context matters more than the raw number.
Why do I see "Direct" as my top referrer?
"Direct" means the visitor didn't come from a clickable link that sends referrer data. This includes: typing your URL directly, using a bookmark, clicking links in emails or Slack/Discord (which often strip referrer info), and clicking links in mobile apps. A lot of your "direct" traffic is actually from links — we just can't tell where. Using UTM parameters on your shared links helps with this.
How accurate are the visitor counts?
They're estimates, not exact counts. We use an HTTP caching technique to distinguish new visitors from returning visitors within the same day. It works well most of the time, but if someone clears their browser cache or uses incognito mode, they'll be counted as a new visitor. All cookieless analytics tools have this trade-off — the alternative is tracking people with cookies, which we don't do. Think of it as "roughly right" rather than "precisely wrong."
Do I need a cookie consent banner with HushStats?
No. HushStats doesn't set cookies, doesn't use localStorage, doesn't store IP addresses, and doesn't collect personal data. Under GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive, no consent is required for analytics that don't process personal data. You can remove your consent banner entirely (as long as you're not using other tools that require it).