Hits and Stats

“I have received an offered to have my web site revised so that it would receive 1000 hits a week all for a few hundred dollars. Can you do that? What should I do?” was the question this week in chorus from three clients far apart.

How often do you hear “my web site received 1765 hits last week”? Wow! Isn’t that terrific! Perhaps so if this represents the number of individuals who visited your site. But is that what this oft quoted figure means? Sorry, but it does not. So, what is all this about and how do we measure the success, or otherwise of our web site?

If you put that question to your web master he should respond by asking "do you mean hits, unique visitors or page views?". To understand, let‘s assume your site consists of one page of text with ten pictures on that page. Most web servers would log access to that page as 11 hits. The more appropriate term would be “down load requests” and not hits. Why so?

When you log onto any site your browser sends a request to the server to download the “home” page. The server dutifully does that and your browser reads the page code line by line to discover how to render that page. How wide is it? Where is the text? What font is it in? What colour is it? How big is each picture and what is it’s name? And so on and on.

It then requests that each page component be sent to it in turn so that your browser may “paint” your screen and display the requested page. The server counts all these requests and usually calls them hits. That is how we got to 11 in our above example page. It is also how download times are affected.

The more elements the longer it takes for your page to get there. Now, the page need not even finish downloading and be fully visible to your visitor before he clicks off yet the elements downloaded so far remain recorded as “hits” . You can now see why the “hits” method is virtually meaningless and at best totally misleading unless all the above is fully understood and accounted for correctly. Yet it is a common marketeering ploy and does fool the uninitiated. And I’ll come to that shortly.

So what about page views you say. That should do the trick. Well, it is better but can still be misleading. A widely used web page design and also server software component is Front Page. If we take the Front Page 2000 component hit counter we can get a totally different effect. That counter does report page views but if you sit there and click the refresh button the counter advances each time you do that. So a page view is just that and does not necessarily reflect the number of visitors. Nevertheless it is an aide to measure how successful each page may be in generating interest and can form some underlying marketing information for you.

It is the unique visitor element which provides us with a more usable result, and this is how it’s done. For most of us who do not have a permanent connection to the web we are allocated a unique but different number by our ISP each time we log on. It is this unique number which is counted but only once in a given period ( often 2-24 hours at a time) depending on the software used by your web server. That way you can revisit a site as often as you like or click refresh and you will only account for one visitor. This is by far the best way of analysing the effectiveness and performance of your web site. Yet obviously return visits over a greater period than the currency of your web identity expands that figure. Then you are counted twice but of course, silly games aside, the return visit can be quite a significant statistic.

Most major hosting servers do much of the analysing for you but if yours does not at least you can do a few simple sums yourself to glean powerful marketing intelligence. When you divide the number of visitors by the number of page views you get 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 away. Perhaps the load time is too slow or your opening statement is inappropriate,or your site is boring or is incorrectly registered with a search engine. 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.

Another useful indicator is the exit page, meaning where did your visitor loose interest in your site and clicked away. Perhaps that page needs urgent attention. Most certainly if it is your home page or if it is the referring page to where you ask your client to commit themselves to your product.

The next important statistic is to see which pages were the most popular. Generally you will note that if the number of times a page is viewed is greater than the unique visitors it means that people have come back to those pages for another look. What generated that interest? How can you capitalise on that? Maybe that is where you should ask for their committal to you - meaning - to buy from you.

The major hosting servers will do all this and much more for you including where your visitors come from, which search word led which search engine to your site, how long they stayed on your site and the list does not stop there. If your server does not provide such detailed information it should be time for you to consider moving your site to a server that does. After all, why are you paying for a tool box that is half empty?

And now to the underlying tale. I was asked how some marketeers could guarantee to increase the hits on your site by astounding numbers with a money back offer. As always, it is easy if you know how. Let me show you!

A common and legitimate design technique is to use invisible ( transparent ) graphics to pad out text, establish unusual spacing and solve other layout problems. If I made each of these invisible pictures one pixel square and put say 100 of these on your page you would not see them but your hit rate would increase by 100 as we now understand only too well. Log onto your site - and guarantee upheld!

As we all know one pixel is just one dot on your monitor screen so it is easy to use quite large numbers without the unawre detecting this. In fact there are ways of fooling all the parameters I have spoken about to bolster numbers no matter what. An honest web master or designer will not entertain using such techniques but , as always, there are others.

The most breathtaking and spectacular of those I have come accross is where the server administrator thinks of a number and all web sites on his server have their counters advanced by that number at the press of a key - and the gullible rush to throw money at him and transfer their sites to his server so he can work his magic for them!

Let me remind you again. It is not the number of unique visitors that counts. It is the number of sales that you make that matter. And hands up all those who analize their web logs once a week to improve their sales!