Your Website Traffic - Unique Visitors vs. Page Views
Web statistics can be as confusing at first, as they are
informative. As a business owner, when it comes to advertising,
it's important to know website stats. Here's some basic
information to differentiate unique visitors and visitors, page
views and hits.
Advertisers and Advertising
Advertising is an important and necessary way to get new and
even established businesses seen. Deciding who to advertise with
can make a difference. When offering advertising space, or
considering the purchase ad space from someone else, it's
important for both parties to be aware of the unique visitors,
visitors and page views for a specific amount of time (this is
usually shown in months, but daily is important to consider in
some cases). This gives both businesses an idea of whether it's
worth paying or charging for advertising on a site. Below are
the site statistics to pay attention to:
Unique Visitor
A unique visitor is a unique IP address that has made at least
one hit on one page of the web site during a certain period of
time. If this visitor makes more than one visit during this
period of time, it is counted only once as a unique visit.
*Basically, if I visit your site 1 time today, I am counted as a
unique visitor. If I come back to your site 10 more times today,
my visits are counted as 1 unique visit and 10 visitors. (For
more search this: define:Unique Visitor )
Visitor
A visitor is also known as a session or a user session. It is
the total number of people who access a website over a certain
period of time. Unlike unique visitors which is a net number, a
visitor is a gross number. This means two "sessions" by a single
user would count as two visitors. *Basically, if I visit your
site 5 times today, I am counted as 1 unique visitor and then as
5 visitors for the day. (For more search this: define:Visitor )
Page Views
The number of times a particular web page is requested from a
Web host's server and delivered to a users browser. The number
of page views delivered across an entire website can be used to
demonstrate the volume of traffic a website receives.
*Basically, this tells you how many pages are being viewed by
your visitors. (For more search this: define:page view)
Hits
This generally means ALL requests from a webserver including
requests by a web browser for html pages, jpeg's, gif's and
other images. Hits is a phrase often thrown around but is
generally not very meaningful in quantitfying search engine
traffic. *Hits count every single thing on your page that loads.
It's not an accurate measure of anything worthwhile. (For more
search this: define:hits)
Website Owner Offering Advertising
If you are a website owner and wish to offer advertising to
others, be thoughtful. Traffic may be a relative thing; think
about if YOU would pay to advertise on a site that has that much
or that little traffic.
While this information applies to your website stats, you can
also put this to general use with Newsletters. If you only have
10 newsletter subscribers, you probably shouldn't charge for
advertising space. On the other hand, you may be able to charge
a small fee if your subscriber list is a few hundred and then
accordingly as your subscriber list grows.
Business Owner Looking to Advertise
If you are considering paying your hard-earned money to
advertise on another site, be informed. If a specific website
hasn't volunteered their stat information, don't be shy about
asking. You work hard for your money and you should have a good
idea of what you are getting. You probably don't want to pay for
a month of advertising when the website you are advertising on
only gets 40 visitors a day. Same is to be said for newsletter
advertising. If the business offering ad space in their
newsletter doesn't provide the number of subscribers on their
list, Ask for it. Then decide for yourself if it's worth the
cost.
Free Traffic Statistic Programs
If you don't have a traffic statistic program on for your site
and you want one, do a search for: Free Traffic Stats. You'll
find several options. Once you sign up for a program you
typically only need to add a bit of coding to your site for it
to begin working. But before you choose one program over
another, here is something to consider:
If you own a website business, counters don't look very
professional. If the stat program you are considering requires
you to use a visible counter on your site, opt to keep looking.
There are programs that do not require a visible counter.
Consider this: If you visit a site, where you are
thinking of placing an order, will you order if a) you don't
know them, b) their counter says 115th visitor ?
Or, on the other hand, what if there counter is a HUGE number -
it's probably counting every single page load and that's not an
accurate count of visitors.
Both of these scenarios raise a red flag, or at least, a yellow
one.. There are so many sites are out there, just keep
searching.
In Conclusion, it pays to know and understand your
website statistics.