Metrics refers to the standard of measurement and when relating to website visitor traffic there are 3 basic standards which include; hits, page views and user sessions. In the early day everyone used the “hit’s” measurement since it will generally be the largest of the 3 and often sounds the best. However, a single user can create a dozen or more hits from a single page view, then banner and text link ads refer to “impressions”, sound confusing?
Without a means of measuring results there’s no clear way to know if your web development work or Blog writing is effective or your ideas are being shared. Most websites are designed with a commercial purpose so it’s even more important to know if the work is paying off.
Blogs have arisen as a way for people to share thoughts and ideas that are mostly less commercial in nature, still both commercial sites and personal blog owners would benefit from good metrics. It’s important to know how many people are browsing or reading your web pages, what pages they’re attracted to, where they’re coming from and how long they stayed?
A person could devote a full-time career to understanding website metrics and truthfully many have but for most people they just want the quick answer to “how to measure site traffic”, so I’ll get right to the point. Check out www.google.com/analytics and apply for a free account. It’s easy to use and very thorough. Google even have an online tutorial and tons of resources on how to get set-up and then how to increase your web site traffic.
Of course there are many other resources on the Net for learning about website metrics and lot’s of software and tools available but like so many things; the place to start is Google.
Newsflash
This news article was just released.
ComScore adds `visits’ to site measures
NEW YORK – The online measurement service comScore Media Metrix has come up with a new way of measuring Web traffic as new technologies increasingly make one of the current industry yardsticks less meaningful.
ComScore said Wednesday it is now reporting on site “visits” — defined as the number of times a person returns to a site with a break of at least a half-hour.
Currently, sites and advertisers often use page views, a figure that reflects the number of Web pages a visitor pulls from a site.
However, many sites are increasingly using a software trick called Ajax to improve the user experience. It allows sites to update data automatically and continually, without users needing to pull up new pages. Page views decline as a result.
Read the entire articlce from Yahoo News.
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So there you have it, the Internet never stops evolving and the “need to know the audience” is an ever increasing demand, as mainstream media and advertising dollars pour into the web, which consequently causes the metrics evaluation systems to become more accurate, while the technology for content distribution morphs into newer vehicles for reaching the audience. This is why I’ve always said that website marketing is very scientific and that I’m an Internet Scientist.
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