Definition:
A dimension is the attribute of visitors to a website. They are attributes of the information, for example, the dimension “City” indicates “Seville” or “Lugo”, the place where a session originates. Dimensions are what can be observed in the rows of a web analytics report, being the activity that a person performs on a website. In this way, language is a dimension, as well as browser preference, campaign…
A dimension provides context to a metric, so a non-dimensioned metric cannot be analyzed. Thus, the metric “sessions” has no meaning unless it is accompanied by a dimension such as “type of user”, “source / medium” or “country”.
The dimensions in Web Analytics
The dimensions can be customizable, although most web analytics tools (including Google Analytics) provide the basics for quick analysis.
In Google Analytics, a primary and a secondary dimension can be added to Analytics reports. Each custom dimension in Google Analytics has one of the following properties or settings: name, index, and scope
A dimension is a set of reference information about a measurable event. In this context, events are known as “facts.” Dimensions categorize and describe data storage facts and measures in ways that support meaningful answers to business questions. Dimensions allow data to be grouped and are used to drill down web analytics data.
Examples of dimensions in Web Analytics
For example, you can see the case of a man aged between 23 and 35, from Valencia, who has visited a website after clicking on an organic Google search using the keyword “paper airplane”. In addition, he visited the website through the Firefox browser, installed on a desktop computer that uses Windows.
In this way, the attributes of visitors to a website can be seen along with their values:
- Male
- Age – 23-35 years
- City – Valencia
- Source / Medium – Google / Organic
- Keyword – paper airplane
- Browser – Chrome
- Device Category – Desktop
- Operating System – Windows
From all this, it can be drawn that gender, age, city, source /medium, keyword, browser, device category and operating system are labeled as dimensions in Google Analytics, as they are the characteristics of website users.
Related Terms
