Website “Hits”

We read an article in last weeks Business Journal that had a quote about a website statistic. Back in the good old days of the first internet bubble, people used to talk about “hits” to their website. It sounded so important… In actuality, a hit is the simplest form of website transaction, and not terribly informative about what’s actually happening on your website.

A web page is made up of tens, or hundreds, or possibly thousands of tiny pieces. Each image, extra javascript file, bit of CSS, and flash file amounts to a hit by the browser to the server requesting that piece of info. Looking at hits is an easy way to get a very over-inflated view of what’s actually happening on your site. Thousands of hits can easily come from hundreds, if not tens of users.

What is more relevant, and actually worth taking note of is “unique users” which shows actual people visiting your site, and “page views” which shows the total number of pages loaded.