Hits and Page Views

One of the most common misconceptions about website statistics is the misuse and abuse of reports listing hits and page views or total requests and requests for pages. Whatever the term, don't be fooled by incorrectly reported and misleading web statistics. Know the facts before wasting your advertising dollars.

Why is this deceptive? Hits (or total requests) indicate total file requests made to a website's server. This includes content pages as well as graphics and errors. For example, a single web page with seven graphics generates eight hits every time someone views that page, one for the page itself and seven for the graphics. The legitimate count is really one page view (or page request) but some sites report eight (or more if errors occurred during the download). Taking the example one step further fully illustrates how misleading it can be. If this same page had gotten 20,000 legitimate page views, then multiply 20,000 by eight and now you're reporting 160,000. That's a big difference!

Click-Throughs and Click-Through Ratios

WakeWorld has the ability to track the number of times an advertisement is clicked on. That means somebody was interested enough in your advertisement to click on it in order to find out more about your product or service. This is an excellent method of measuring the effectiveness of your advertisement. If you're paying good money for advertising on a particular website, that website should be producing click-throughs to your website or your money is not being well spent.

To take this effectiveness measurement a step further, we can calculate an ad campaign's click-through ratio. This is done by taking the number of times an advertiser's ad was clicked on and dividing it by the number of impressions reported for that ad campaign. For example, say you place an ad on WakeWorld and, at the end of the month, we report to you that your ad received 10,000 impressions throughout the month. We also tell you that 300 visitors actually clicked on the advertisement and were taken to your website during that same month. By dividing 300 by 10,000 you get a click-through ratio of 3.0%.

If you have any questions email us at gobig@wakeworld.com or call (619) 204-2885.