All web traffic is not created equal.  To best maximize revenue on your Web site, you need to know the key points to Web traffic and what these points mean to your overall business strategy.  There are 5 key factors in web traffic analysis; hits, page views, user sessions, unique users and referring sites.

Hit - A request for a file from the web server.   The number of hits received by a website is frequently cited to assert its popularity, but this number is extremely misleading and dramatically over-estimates popularity. A single web-page typically consists of multiple (often dozens) of discrete files, each of which is counted as a hit as the page is downloaded, so the number of hits is really an arbitrary number more reflective of the complexity of individual pages on the website than the website's actual popularity. The total number of visitors or page views provides a more realistic and accurate assessment of popularity.*

Page Views - A request for a file whose type is defined as a “page of content”.*   For example, a “page of content” would be a standard page like your main page or a standard HTML page.  Each time a user to your Web site goes to a new page, a new “page view” is logged in your web stats program. In stat analysis, a single page view may generate multiple hits as all the resources required to view the page (images, .js and .css files) are also requested from the web server. *  In many cases your page views are directly related to your ad impressions as you have a certain number of ads on each page.  For example, if you have 3 ads on every page and your Web site served up 10 ads to the web than you also served 30 ad impressions.  

User Sessions - In tabulating statistics for Web site usage, a user session (sometime referred to as a visit) is the presence of a user with a specific IP address who has not visited the site recently (typically, anytime within the past 30 minutes). The number of user sessions per day is one measure of how much traffic a Web site has. A user who visits a site at noon and then again at 3:30 pm would count as two user visits.  Unique IP address?  Hugh?  Your computer has a number assigned to it when you log on to a computer network to get online.  This is your unique “internet protocol” address.  Sort of like caller id on your phone.  When you call me your id shows up.  In the same respect, when your IP address accesses my Web site my web stats program sees you and logs you behind the scenes.  The HUGE kink in this method of tracking users is that mega ISP’s like AOL can often assign a different IP to each user each time they visit a new page on your web site.  In some cases the same user will be given the same IP address on different days.  This is why it is very hard to track users based on their IP address.  I advise my clients to determine how many pages a “typical” user visits by looking at the number of page views from users from smaller ISP’s.  Then use this number to determine how many users you have coming to your Web site by diving total page views by the typical number of pages visited by a user to your site.  As a rule of measure, most web users will browse 5 pages on your site per visit.  If most of your users come back 2 times per month, then take your total page views and divide by 10 to come up with your unique users per month.    

Visitor / Unique Visitor / Unique User – A uniquely identified user generating requests on the web server or viewing pages within a defined time period (i.e. day, week or month). A Unique Visitor counts once within the timescale. A visitor can make multiple visits. The Unique User is now the only mandatory metric for an ABCe audit. *   Unique users is a common measurement of the popularity of a website, often quoted to potential advertisers or investors, and measured over a standard period of time, typically a month. However, Greg Harmon of Belden Research says "may overstate" is a gross understatement. Remember, it's just an identifier of a computer, not a person. And usually, the computer is identified by a "cookie" which is most often specific to an individual browser on that computer. Since an increasing percentage of people in the United States (at least) now have access to a computer at home and at work or school, one may have to divide the reported total of unique users in half. Then another increasing fraction of people regularly delete cookies from their machines—presumably both at home and at work, and yet another large fraction use more than one browser on each of their machines. This means that for a typical news site, for example, which people might typically visit more than once a day to keep up with breaking news, the reported unique users might overstate the number of different people by a factor of four. On the plus side, for those wishing to impress advertisers or investors, the reported number of sessions or visits and page views are probably more accurate, so that smaller group of people visits much more often and looks at more pages than the raw numbers would suggest. *

Referring Web Sites- In your web stats you will see a section that shows you where your users are coming from.  This is often called referers, or referring sites.  This is important to note for promotional and ROI purposes.  For example, if your web site is BigTools.com and you are running ads on ToolWorld.com you will want to know how much of your web traffic is coming from this site and other sites.  This will also help you determine if users are coming from search engines or other sites that you might not be aware of from around the blogosphere or global web community.    

It is very important to grasp these concepts at the most grass roots level to be a success online.  When selling your Web site you must be able to accurately tell a potential advertiser about your web traffic.  As you roll forward with marketing plans you must be able to tell where your web traffic is coming from.  Web stat analysis is not a one way street and is a complex mission.  However, you can simplify the process by better understanding the basics.  Need help?  Many people do so ask.  Web stats analysis is important and can not be overlooked.  Seek professional help if you need it and do not wait.  

As you have heard me say before, You drive the bus, so get on the bus, bet off the bus or get run over by the bus.  Remember, in all cases, you need to be driving the bus.    

The views of Ryan Dohrn are 100% personal in nature and do not represent the views of his employer, any other person, company or entity in any way. Any similarly is coincidental in nature.

Sources:

*  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Hits#Key_definitions