BetterVisitors

Website Traffic: What’s a Hit, A Page View, A Visitor?

October 2nd, 2007

If you can’t count, you can’t make any money. And you won’t have any money to count unless you also know how to count traffic, so listen up. (Even if you think you’re already an expert.)

Some people throw around the words “hits” and “page views”, but usually they wouldn’t know the difference between a hit and a potato pancake.

You know how to tell a $1 from and $100, right? Well, these four essential terms are the currency of traffic. Learn to count them right and you’ll be head and shoulders above everyone else. Or don’t bother, and get used to trading $100s for $1s instead of the other way around.

• Visitors are people who come to your website. It’s the equivalent of a customer who walks into a store.
• Visits are how many times they came in. If someone walks into your store, then leaves, then comes back the next day, that’s two visits but one visitor.
• Page Views are how many pages the visitors loaded on your site. Imagine a department store, with different kinds of things on each floor, just as you might have different pages for different categories of products. Whenever a customer goes to that floor, whether it’s once during his visit or 100 times, he gets a view of that department. Whenever someone goes to one of your pages, that’s a page view.
• Hits are the stupidest stat, and it’s a term you should avoid unless you actually want to confuse someone. Let’s suppose your page has three photos, some text, and two links. That’s six “resources” that have to be loaded, and that counts as six hits. It’s meaningless, because you could put up a page with 100 photos, and then you’d have 100 hits. Big whoop.

Remember: if you understand traffic, you will make money. Commit these terms to memory and you’ll be well on your way.

Entry Filed under: Traffic