Web Site Visitors
When it comes time to report web site performance to any manager or business owner, one statistic trumps all others - Web Site Visitors.
Return on Investment and conversion rates are very important but we must first properly identify web site visitors.
Hits vs. Visits
A common belief is that the term "Hits" means the same thing as "Visits". This is not the case.
A hit is a request for a single piece of data on the server. A single visit to the server may equate to many, many hits.
A common practice of early web site developers was to use a "hit counter" to report the number of visitors to a web site. Each time that counter was requested, the count would go up once. Unfortunately hits and visits appeared to mean the same thing.
All sophisticated web site tracking tools report hits and visits correctly, we simply need to call on the proper statistic.
Note: Web sites have become very sophisticated and it is not uncommon for one page of the site to equal 30-40 hits. Any more, this statistic may be ignored by all but hosting professionals.
Unique, New & Repeat Web Site Visitors
A certain amount of analysis can be made by evaluating the different types of visitors available for analysis.
- Unique Visitors identifies the total number of different visitors
to your website.
- New Visitors breaks down the unique visitors number to highlight
those visitors arriving to your website for the first time during
that time period.
- Repeat Visitors highlights those visitors that are returning for additional visits during the time period.
A quick comparison of these three numbers will give you a statistical overview of your attraction of new visitors as well as a repeat rate performance.
