WEB STATISTICS: The difference between hits, page impressions, user sessions and unique visitors

EVERYONE with a website or blog should be interested to know just how well they are doing in terms of generating online traffic. However, the value of website statistics lies in the interpretation of trends rather than concentration on precise figures.

While some site aggregators focus on 'hits' and 'user sessions', others offer insight into 'unique visits' and 'page impressions'. Below is an attempt at distinguishing between these terms in order to better understand what the dots and lines on web statistics mean.

WEBSITE HITS:

The idea of measuring website traffic using hits is becoming rather old school due to its inaccuracy. Technically speaking a page hit is the term for any requested file, including each of a page's images or graphics. It is the retrieval of any item, like a page or a graphic, from a web server. Any time a piece of data matches criteria you set, in a Google search for example, it's recorded as a hit.

The problem with hits however is that when a visitor calls up a web page consisting of several graphics, each one is recorded as a hit plus one for the html page. For this reason, hits often aren't a good indication of web traffic.

PAGE IMPRESSIONS/VIEWS:

While a hit is a single file request from a web-server, a page impression is a combination of one of more files sent to a user via that user's request (such as a search). In other words, it is the viewing or downloading of a website in its entirety by one user.

In web advertising, the term 'impression' is often synonymous for 'view', and is usually what advertisers use to determine how and where to advertise online.

However, the accuracy of this data will depend upon whether or not the user's PC is 'caching' the files integral to that page, or whether the user clears the cache after each session. In other words, whether or not the page has to reload each time.

Page impressions therefore become meaningless on framed sites. If a framed page has a separate frame for the header, the top border and the main text area, for example, a visitor will create a total of four different page impressions rather than one.

USER SESSIONS:

In tabulating more accurate statistics for website usage, user sessions are often used for counting the number of times a particular user visits the site. This is determined by the visitor's IP address and thereby solves the problems of repeat visits to pages.

These are calculated by the presence of a user with a specific IP address who has not visited the site recently (typically, anytime within the past 30 minutes). For example, a user who visits a site at noon and then again at 3pm would be counted as two user sessions or visits.

UNIQUE VISITORS:

A related term for user sessions, a unique visitor refers to a person who visits a website more than once within a specified period of time.

Different from a hits or page views (measured by the number of files that are requested from a site) unique visitors are measured according to their unique IP addresses. These act like online fingerprints, and unique visitors are counted only once no matter how many times they visit the site.

One could think of unique visitors as your loyal readership or website users. Treat them well!

Hope this was helpful. Please add any additional insight or unique info you may have below.

Links:  • Hits and impressions • Site measurement FAQs

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OUTSOURCING WORK ONLINE: Outsourcing in the 21st century

YOU come home after a long, hard day at work. You have a truck-load of paperwork saved to disk to attend to and find bills in the post. To top it all you find that your offspring have broken a window and realise that tomorrow is your wife’s birthday. You manage to write up a quick to-do list before passing out from exhaustion.

Today is your day off – thank God! You crawl out of bed at 11am and check your email in the hopes that you’ve won the lottery or a free vacation to Mauritius (one that isn’t a scam). Instead you find an email displaying the list of tasks you typed out the night before – all marked as “done.”

Before you can pinch yourself to make sure you’re not dreaming, your wife enters the room, embraces you passionately, and thanks you for the e-card and the wonderful birthday gift that arrived that morning. “This also arrived today”, she says as she hands you a copy of The World is Flat – a book you’ve always wanted, that you so happened to include in your to-do list. There are people fixing the window in the living room and in the post are confirmation of payment letters from the municipality.

Then you remember: in your dazed state last night you still managed to send off your to-do list to your new remote executive assistant living in Bangalore.

Operation Outsource

Outsourcing work online, which is fast becoming a popular trend in the US, is the equivalent of having a personal assistant, only these are more of a virtual breed.

Online companies such as GetFriday and Brickworks offer to carry out your routine and mundane tasks – giving you the freedom to pursue the more important things in your life. Based in countries such as India and China, these companies have young graduates in cubicles - backed by a network of professional talent, who will perform just about any task you ask of them (provided that it can be performed online). An excerpt from GetFriday reads:

"At GetFriday, we can handle almost any task, business or personal, that doesn’t require our physical presence. If it can be carried out over the internet, via email, fax or telephone, we can handle it."

There seems to be no limit to these tasks that can be done online. Booking holidays, secretarial work, paying bills and taxes, online shopping, creation of legal documents, making appointments, finding you a parking spot in another city before you arrive, employing the services of electricians or plumbers in your area, website maintenance, weather reports, chartering diet plans, ordering groceries, sending apology emails and flowers to your husband or wife, and even updating your blog, are all on the list of options.

One American outsourcer, A. Jacobs, describes how he “outsourced his child” by getting one of his virtual assistants to read his 7 year old a bedtime story over the phone. He describes a close bond between his top Indian assistant named Honey, which did away with his worry of trusting his personal affairs to someone he had never even met.

Outsourcing has become known as an online concierge service and is poised to transform every industry in America, from law to banking to accounting. However, work-driven individuals have started employing such services to perform all their personal errands, which all get done while they sleep.

The idea is that if someone else is busy plugging away on the lower-end tasks it frees Americans to work on more higher-end, creative projects. It’s a case of the rich getting richer and the poor...getting a little richer too.

The cost of outsourcing work online varies according to the company, yet it seems to be fixed at around $1000 (R8000) a month, which is a bargain for wealthy Americans who have are cash-rich and time-starved. The US currently has a $20 billion overseas outsourcing industry, yet management consultants and economists say it's likely to evolve into an even larger niche.

To put the cost-effectiveness of outsourcing into perspective it helps to look at maths tutoring as one particular service. In the U.S., tutoring services charge $40 to $60 an hour for tutoring whereas some skilled tutors in India are paid $2 to $3 an hour. Furthermore, $20 in India is enough to buy a week's groceries for two people.

The idea of outsourcing does beg the question of corporate responsibility in terms of working conditions and fair wages and there is obviously much room for large corporations to abuse the system. Yet do you think anyone really cares? I think not.

Wealthy Americans may have the financial ability to outsource their responsibilities to so called developing countries, yet cases of outsourcing are perhaps illustrating their lack of efficiency. It’s just a shame that the efficiency of countries like India and China is been used to serve the power elite rather than their own economies.

Now I’m not one to stereotype and label people, yet from this little insight into efficiency, I say we should have an Indian woman as president! Perhaps Honey would be interested in a promotion (if becoming president of South Africa is in any way a promotion).

Interesting links:
My Outsourced Life by A.J. Jacobs
Outsourcing Your Life in the Wall Street Journal

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MYVIDEO: The South African choice for online video

THE recent merger of YouTube with Google Video has resulted in a frustrating bug for all online video fans. YouTube videos embedded in other websites or blogs (and often the ones on YouTube.com) are displaying the polite message: “We’re sorry, this video is no longer available.”

This has caused somewhat of a conspiracy among bloggers, who are digging deep to find answers and possible solutions to the problem.

One blogger has suggested that unplayable YouTube videos embedded elsewhere force viewers to go to YouTube’s website - increasing their traffic and ad impressions. It’s obvious that increased traffic leads to increased ad impressions and therefore more money, yet I suspect that this is not the case.

It appears to be a simple bug issue and the problem can be resolved by deactivating Google Web Accelerator.

PROUDLY SOUTH AFRICAN

I have been producing online videos on a weekly basis for the past few months. I have been uploading these on both YouTube and MyVideo (which is basically the South African version of YouTube). I also embed these videos into my blog but always use the MyVideo code when doing so. This is purely to keep my blog local and support the South African underdog, yet my experience of using both channels has revealed a few pros and cons for each service.

First off your videos are likely to get far more views on MyVideo, especially if you’re producing South African videos. There are far fewer videos to compete with for viewership and the site was designed for proudly South African videos.

Statistically I’ve found that the same videos on my MyVideo channel generally get about 3 times more views than they do on YouTube, unless (it seems) your video is about an international celebrity or degrading to South Africa in some way. In the latter case my mock video on the Eskom crisis has had over 1000 more views on YouTube than it has on MyVideo.

YouTube - Pros & Cons

Two great features of YouTube, on the other hand, are annotations and YouTube insight – the latter made possible since Google took YouTube under its wing. This tool allows us to see exactly how and from where people came to view our videos. More importantly, it allows one to gain insight as to where your video has been embedded on other external sites.

One downside of YouTube, however, is that they are very strict about copywrite. I once used a song as a bedding track for one of my videos, and thanks to Google’s help, YouTube picked up the file name of the song saved within the avi file and traced it as belonging to UMG. An automated email I received stated that they would not pull the video yet could place adverts on the page where the video is hosted. Needless to say I now have an over-sized advert for the new iphone accompanying this video (subject to change).

(This was not picked up by myvideo.co.za).

I was recently contacted by Tristan Owen who works for www.myvideo.co.za after reporting a bug issue (another bonus of the smaller video site is the greater customer care)! He has asked for any suggestions with regards to improving the site. Since online video is fast becoming my career and life ambition, I sent him a mini essay with an apology note attached.

He's looking into some of my ideas (video statistics being a major one) and is hoping to have them implemented soon. I’ll keep all those interested posted on whatever upgrades we can expect. In the meantime please add any suggestions you might have below and upload your videos to MyVideo. Local can be lekker!

How to create your own online videos: Movie Making 101 - a simple guide

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