Counting Your Web Visitors
Wow, what a week! I worked my butt off this week and got three projects done and the newsletter out. I love a productive week like that. Getting so much accomplished allows me to feel okay with taking the weekend off, and that's just what I did. I read 4 books, and got some yard work done. To me that's a GREAT weekend.
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Just wanted to talk a minute about determining how many visitors your web site gets and tracking your web site visitors.
First of all, when you look at stats or analytics, "Hits" is not the thing to look at. Nor is it the term to use when referring to how many visitors your web site gets.
"Hits" refers to how many FILES are opened and viewed by someone going to your site. In any given single page there will be more than one file opened. For example, there will be the HTML (or XHTML or PHP or ASP or...) page itself, and all the files called by that page such as the CSS stylesheet, each and every image file, any JavaScript files, etc.
That means that you get numerous "Hits" for one visitor seeing one page on your site. That's why I cringe when I hear people talking about how many "Hits" they get on their web site. Hits means virtually nothing when determing how many visitors your site gets.
What does give you a clearer picture of the amount of traffic your site gets is the term, ready for this? VISITORS! or VISITS!
A good analytic or web stats program (not necessarily the same thing) will tell you how many PEOPLE visited your site, what pages they visited, how long they stayed, what search term or referring web site they came to your site from and from what page they exited your site from.
This will give you a much better idea of where your traffic comes from, what they do while on your site and why they leave. All that is powerful ammo for your web marketing strategies, if you know how to use it.
-------------------------------------------------------
Just wanted to talk a minute about determining how many visitors your web site gets and tracking your web site visitors.
First of all, when you look at stats or analytics, "Hits" is not the thing to look at. Nor is it the term to use when referring to how many visitors your web site gets.
"Hits" refers to how many FILES are opened and viewed by someone going to your site. In any given single page there will be more than one file opened. For example, there will be the HTML (or XHTML or PHP or ASP or...) page itself, and all the files called by that page such as the CSS stylesheet, each and every image file, any JavaScript files, etc.
That means that you get numerous "Hits" for one visitor seeing one page on your site. That's why I cringe when I hear people talking about how many "Hits" they get on their web site. Hits means virtually nothing when determing how many visitors your site gets.
What does give you a clearer picture of the amount of traffic your site gets is the term, ready for this? VISITORS! or VISITS!
A good analytic or web stats program (not necessarily the same thing) will tell you how many PEOPLE visited your site, what pages they visited, how long they stayed, what search term or referring web site they came to your site from and from what page they exited your site from.
This will give you a much better idea of where your traffic comes from, what they do while on your site and why they leave. All that is powerful ammo for your web marketing strategies, if you know how to use it.
posted by CD WebMaker - Sunday, August 27, 2006
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