What everyone asks first is, how many visitors did we get to our website? 

No matter how long you’ve had your website, your analytics tool, who you are or what you do! This is always the first question, your natural instinct.  So let’s look at a couple of variations: 

Visits 

Also be known as ‘total visitors’.  Simply put how many people visited your website in a given timeframe.   But, in this metric the same person could visit you website 5 times in a day and it would be counted five times.  This leads me onto... 

Unique Visits 

This is basically home many ‘unique’ people have visited your website in a given timeframe.  So, it doesn’t take into account repeat visit, well it does but it won’t include users who visit your website, say 5 times in a day. 

For example: I visit the BBC website 5 times in a day (to keep on top of the sport of course!). This would show as: 

• Visits:     5
• Unique Visits:    1 

I do this for a week: 

• Visits:    35
• Unique Visits:    1 

Why should you care and what you need to care about? 

They provide the foundation of the activity coming to your website.  I personally consider ‘unique visitors’ as more important of the two, as this in ‘new’ people coming to you shop, business.  How do they react, what actions do they take, how quickly do they leave, and a host other insights can be gained. However loyalty and ‘recency’ are also really important in building relationships and selling more – but we’ll be talking about this in the next week or two. 

So, pretty straightforward but you’d be amazed how people can get confused, so let’s all get on the ‘same page’ and I’ll define some more basics over the next week or so and then we can get down to some real conversion busting tips. 

Google Dave 

PS...Remember post your comments; let me know what you’d like to know.