Glossary
Analytics
Analytics is basically using existing business data or statistics to make informed decisions.
Page views
Refers to the number of times a page was viewed. It measures each request for a full-page document (rather than an element of a page such as an image, movie, or audio file) on a website. It is not hits – which measure the number of calls to a server and each element of a page eg image, movie or audio file is counted as a hit, even when it is only one page view.
On-site web analytics
On-site web analytics measures a visitor’s journey once they land on your website. Measuring the performance of your site in a commercial context It is On-site web analytics measures the performance of your website in a commercial context.
Hits
Interested in tracking website hits? Unfortunately ‘hits’ are not an accurate metric for measuring site traffic. Why? Because tracking online behaviour is about ‘human’ behaviour and a 'hit' measures the amount of work a server completes to load a web page. In other words, to load one page may equal several hits. Alternative website metrics are visits and unique visitors.
According to Jim Sterne and Steven Clark, 'Hits' stands for 'How Idiots Track Success'. For further reading see this Australian Government blog.
Visit
A visit refers to an interaction between a visitor and a website. The visit begins when a person first views a page on a website. It will continue until that person stops all activity on the site for 30 minutes. Another way to think of a visit is a 'session'.
Unique visitor
Unique visitors represent the number of unduplicated visitors to a website over the course of a specified time period. A unique visitor is determined with cookies. Unique visitors are usually counted Monthly, Weekly and Daily.
