Return Frequency Report

[katrina_plucker]

I have a question regarding the Return Frequency Report.  It automatically lists out Page Views, Visits and Unique Visitors.  The first report I pulled was the Pages Reports and edited the Metrics to include Page Views, Visits and Unique Visitors.  I haven't used the Return Frequency Report for delivering any reports before so I'd like to make sure I have answers before passing it along to my colleagues.  Between the Return Frequency Report and the Pages Report, which both provide the same Metrics for the same time range, the Page Views and Unique Visitors are equal.  Although, the number of visits are differing.  In the Pages Report they are 1,072 and the Return Frequency Report only 871.  

What would be the reason for this when the Page Views and Unique Visitors are adding up?

Thanks!

[brian_au · Accepted solution]

The Bold bottom Page Views and Unique Visitors figures are the site wide totals in the Return Frequency report (not actually a sum of the return frequency line items).

The Bold bottom line Visits total in the context of the Return Frequency report is the sum of each Return Frequency visits line item and only pertains to those visits which are return site visits. The Bold bottom line Visits total in the context of the Pages report is the sum of overall site visits and is not a sum of the individual Page Visits line items.

Best,

Brian

[katrina_plucker]

Is there some template or something?  How do you know what reports show the website total and what are showing line-by-line total?  That has and obviously is still continuing to be a challenge for me in interpreting this reports...

[brian_au]

There isn't a guide as it varies by report use case. If you aren't sure you can always compare the total to the the base overall site single metric report (page views, visits, UVs). Overall you can tell by the context of the report and can often tell by looking at the % of total figures.

https://marketing.adobe.com/resources/help/kb/en_US/analytics/kb/sum-line-items-different-from-total...

Best,

Brian