Internet Definitions We Use @ 121 Connections
(For more information about Internet terms and definitions go to: http://www.webopedia.com/
As all of you know, we regularly use terms that identify the responses to our web sites. For my own benefit I reviewed the definitions below. I thought I would share these definitions with you. You may think of other terms that we need to define carefully. The largest figure that we report is our unique visitors. Let's discuss how "conversion rate" relates to the other two figures we report. George
Hit
(1) Also called a page hit. The retrieval of any item, like a page or a graphic, from a Web server. For example, when a visitor calls up a Web page with four graphics, that's five hits, one for the page and four for the graphics. For this reason, hits often aren't a good indication of Web traffic. Compare with page view.
(2) Any time a piece of data matches criteria you set. For example, each of the matches from a Yahoo or any other search engine search is called a hit.
Unique Visitors
Unique visitors are actual users of your website or viewing your web pages. They are usually counted by IP address and user agent string. Unique visitor counts are normally much lower that "hits" to your web site. This is because one visitor may view 10 or more pages which would count as hits, but would still be one user.
Page View
Each time a user visits a Web page, it is called a page view. Page views, also written "pageviews," are tracked by website monitoring applications to record a website's traffic. The more page views a website has, the more traffic it is receiving. However, since a page view is recorded each time a Web page is loaded, a single user can rack up many page views on one website. Therefore, unique page views are commonly tracked to log the number of different visitors a website receives in a given time period.
Page views are commonly confused with website hits. While people often use the term "hit" to describe a page view, technically a hit is recorded for each object that loads during a page view. For example, if a Web page contains HTML, two images, and a JavaScript reference, a single page view will record four hits. If a page contains over two hundred images, one page view will record over two hundred hits.
Page views are more similar to impressions, which are commonly tracked by online advertisers. Page views and impressions may be identical if one advertisement is placed on each page. However, if multiple ads are positioned on each page, the number of ad impressions will be greater than the number of page views.
Conversion Rate
Definition: The percentage of visitors who take a desired action.
Information: The desired action can take many forms, varying from site to site. Examples include sales of products, membership registrations, newsletter subscriptions, software downloads, or just about any activity beyond simple page browsing.
A high conversion rate depends on several factors, all of which must be satisfactory to yield the desired results -- the interest level of the visitor, the attractiveness of the offer, and the ease of the process.
The interest level of the visitor is maximized by matching the right visitor, the right place, and the right time.
The attractiveness of the offer includes the value proposition and how well it is presented. It is worth noting that small, impulse items typically have a higher conversion rate than large, shopping items.
The visitor's ease of completing the desired action is dependent on site usability which includes intuitive navigation and fast loading pages.
Dr. George Flattery
