You know that computers run the Internet. You know computers are efficient and flawless counting machines. Conclusion: Internet websites must know with excruciating accuracy who is visiting them. Right? Full Article >>
Wrong, as it turns out.
I always get a little uneasy when people start asking traffic-related questions about websites. It’s just no fun to try and explain the difference between a “hit” (which is usually the word that gets used) and a “visit”, not to mention “visitors” and “unique visitors”. The less technical the audience, the less fun this conversation is.
And really, in many cases, knowing exactly how many pairs of eyeballs scanned your lovingly-created page, hand-crafted HTML, validated CSS, and thrice-revised copy doesn’t do you a bit of good.
Yep - read that again. Site traffic, in many cases, is meaningless.
Other than just helping you feel better about the time you put into your site (and justify it’s cost to the higher-ups), if you can’t take those traffic numbers and take action based on them, then they’re essentially useless. That so many of the numbers are questionable from a technical perspective and “web metrics” of any sort begin to look like nicely crafted, well charted and graphed houses of cards. One gentle blow and they all come fluttering apart.
Not buying/selling advertising? Not doing eCommerce? Not running marketing campaigns with direct, unique ties to your site? Then use server statisics only in a general sense - look at the trends, check your referrers to see how people are getting there.
But don’t hang your hat - or justify your job - based strictly on server statistics. Find other goals for your website than just big traffic., and find other ways of measuring your progress towards those goals.
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