Hits, Unique Visitors and Page Views - Studying Web Traffic.
Hits, Unique Visitors and Page Views - Studying Web Traffic.
When studying your web site traffic, it is important to be able
to differentiate the above terms. A question that webmasters are
often asked is "how many hits does your site get?". You then
need to ask "do you mean hits, unique visitors or page views?".
Many hit counters, such as the FrontPage 2000 component can be a
little misleading. This particular hit counter only measures
page views and if you sit on a page clicking the "refresh"
button, it will increment. In order to get an accurate picture
of your web site traffic flow; you'll probably want a more
detailed reporting tool than this.
A hit is the result of a file being requested and served from
your web site. This can be a html document, an image file, an
audio track etc. etc. Web pages that contain a large number of
elements will return high hit scores. Hits are of very little
consequence when analysing your visitor demographics.
A page view means just that. Once again, it is not a true
indication of how many different people are visiting your web
site, but it is a good way to judge how "sticky" (the ability to
retain the interest of visitors) your web site is and is an
important consideration regarding the possibility of attracting
high paying advertising.
A unique visitor is where stats really count. It is someone with
a unique IP address (when you log onto the Internet, you are
assigned a unique IP address, or if you are a cable modem user
your IP address is usually "static", it never changes) who is
entering a Web site for the first time that day (or some other
specified period). Your IP address is an identifier, while you
are using it, no else on the Internet can utilise that
particular set of numbers. Your number is counted once, usually
for a 2-24 hour period, dependent up the tracking software. So
no matter how many times a visitor refreshes or navigates
through your web site, they will only be counted once for the
specified time period. This is by far the more accurate way of
analysing web site performance.
When you divide the number of visitors by the number of page
views, this can give an excellent indication of whether traffic
is transient or is staying on your site. If the average is one
page or under, you can be pretty sure that there is something on
your pages that is scaring people off. Perhaps the load time is
too slow or your opening statement is inappropriate. Remember
that due to bandwidth considerations, those first few elements
that display as your page is loading may be the deciding factor
as to whether a visitor waits around for the entire page to load.
Studying your web site traffic can take up a fair amount of
time, but it is definitely worth it. Of course in amongst all
this you need to be able to make the time to carry out
promotion, maintain linkages, develop new content etc etc etc.
Running a large, content rich site is definitely not a part-time
job!
Michael Bloch