What is the difference between unique visitors and "hits"?
A unique visitor is exactly what it sounds like! It is one unique individual that has entered to view your web site. "Hits", which are often confused as being individual visitors, have nothing to do with individual visitors and are irrelevant from a business point of view.
A "hit" is calculated by the number of items that load on a page. Take images for example; if you have 10 images on a page (logo, navigation buttons, photos), that page will register 10 "hits" every time it is loaded. If one individual visits your web site and views 10 pages, and each of those pages has 10 images, that one individual will account for 100 "hits"!
A good example of "hits" vs. unique visitors is Rodsguide.com. On any given day, Rodsguide.com averages 1,800 unique visitors. Guess how many "hits" are registered by those 1,800 visitors...over 35,000"hits"!
As a web site owner, you will be highly concerned with the number of unique visitors that enter your web site. We offer our clients 3rd party professional statistics that show the business owner how many visitors visit their site per day, which web site referred them, as well as other information that will help you make educated business decisions.