It always sounds fantastic when you’re told by your web agency, “We’ve got all these great stats on your users. We’ll send them over to you to have a look and be amazed. And then you get them and you go, “Uhh?”

Usage Statistics can be pretty confusing until you know what the different terms mean. So here, in a nutshell, are the terms explained.

Hits
Hits aren’t the same as the number of visitors viewing the website. They actually tell you the number of server requests made. That could include the images, files associated with viewing a page, as well, as the page itself. Don’t too smug when your agency say “Your site’s had million hits this month!” A page with 1,000 little thumbnail graphics visited 1,000 times will give you a million hits alone.

Impressions
Impressions, also know as ‘unique impressions’, is a much more accurate guide for the traffic generated by a website. A unique impression will measure the number of actual people visiting the website and no matter how many “hits” a visitor registers on your website, the server will record the session as one unique visit.

(more…)