How'd You Get This Number- Yay for Etsy Analytics...Now, what does it all mean?

Many Etsy folks have been hoopin' & hollerin' the last couple days- celebrating Etsy's release of Etsy Web Analytics provided through Google Analytics (read the Etsy Storque article here). This service is free, helpful, addicting (or addictive? I never know). I've used it for my blog- mostly to see random bits o' trivia like which countries people visit from & which languages they speak. The beneficial aspects for Etsy shops include nifty graphs comparing visits & pageviews, new visitors, & average time spent on the site.
Those are the parts I understand at least. The rest is a wee bit complicated. Google offers a help section and a glossary of terms....but I found myself looking for a dictionary to decipher the glossary. I did find this extremely informative article from Biznik that breaks down all the jargon into words that don't require a tech degree to understand. Here's a brief snippet:

TERMS

There are MANY terms used in a Google Analytics report, and sometimes people get mystified simply because they don't understand the terms and have no one around to explain them.

Here are the important ones:

Bounce Rate: the bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who come and exit immediately. Example: I get to your home page and then instead of viewing your other pages, I immediately leave your website and go to someone else's website. It's a quality metric.

The higher your bounce rate, the more this "leave instantly" thing is happening. You want a low bounce rate. Something lower than 40% is good, particularly if you have a lot of new people visiting your website.

Traffic Sources: Traffic sources are the places your visitors are coming from. See below for further explanation, but your visitors are either coming from search engines, referral sites or by directly entering your website address (your www) into the browser.

Referring Site: A referring site is another website that links to yours. So, if a visitor clicks on your website link in your Biznik profile, Biznik will be listed as a referral source on your Google Analytics report.

Direct traffic: Direct traffic is any visit to your website that is a result of someone entering your website address directly into the browser bar. Example - you go to your browser and type in www.biznik.com - that counts as direct traffic to Biznik.

Keywords: If you've had any visits to your website that are a result of search, Google Analytics tracks the keywords or phrases that were used to find you.

Avg. Time: Google Analytics also tracks the amount of time a visitor spent on a page, as well as per visit. The more time spent, in theory, the better for you. In general, the longer you can keep someone's attention on your site, the better.

Absolute Unique Visitors: Google Analytics tracks visits to your website by geographic location and IP address. But, it counts every visit and click, even if it's the same person constantly hitting the back and forth buttons, for example. So, you can use the Absolute Unique Visitors tool to discover precisely how many new visitors you've gotten within a given time period.

Entrance and Exit paths / Navigation Summary - Analytics can show you exactly how a visitor got to any page in your site, and then can tell you where they went (if they left by clicking a link to another site).

*I do recommend reading the whole article though for more explanations!

Here are a few more great resources & tutorials I've found:

YouTube Tutorial Video- walks you through the interface: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KK7i084W2w

Google Analytics Official Blog: http://analytics.blogspot.com/

Basic Set-Up Tutorial: http://www.conversationmarketing.com/2007/02/google_analytics_video_tutoria_1.htm

Analytics for Beginners- Clear Explanations:

http://www.mahalo.com/How_to_Use_Google_Analytics_for_Beginners

Understanding the Stats Tutorial: http://timothyadamdesigns.blogspot.com/2009/01/google-analytics-and-your-etsy-shop.html

Tracking Internal Etsy Traffic from Ferolux:

http://www.screencast.com/users/thatdingo/folders/Default/media/7e2479d4-1e2c-4f86-b760-3416b324be91

Tutorial for Setting Up Analytics with Photos from TinyFig:

http://sweetfigments.blogspot.com/2009/01/how-to-set-up-your-google-analytics.html

Recognizing Trends on your Analytics by Timothy Adams:

http://timothyadamdesigns.blogspot.com/2009/01/google-analytics-tracking-time-trends.html