Hit Counters For Your Website (are useless)
Well some of them are anyways. I recently had a potential client brag to me about how many "visitors" he had visiting his site.
At the time of this writing, his "visitors" had reached a whopping 30,863! Wow! Awesome right?
Well it would be if that number was accurate, but alas, that figure is WAY off.
Look folks, hit counters are useless, pointless, and unnecessary. Don't bother. The only thing they show you is how many times your page has been loaded.
"What do you mean dude?" Let me show you by example:
I created a copy of my homepage and installed a hit counter here: Copy of Home Page with Hit Counter
Go there and refresh / reload the page (F5 for my fellow shortcut keyboard junkies out there).
The number goes up each time you refresh the page! Basically, as one single user, you could theoretically refresh the page 100 times and the counter would appear as though 100 people have visited your site!
Now I hear some of you say "well that will make my site appear popular, thus giving my site credibility". To you I say "dude, there are about 100 other things that will increase the success of your website, hit counters make the site look tacky, and can distract your potential customers/clients from your website's overall objective (i.e. clicking the checkout button, of filling out an important form)".
Now I'm NOT saying that numbers are not important. However, how many times your page is viewed (refreshed or reloaded) is much less important than statistics such as where people are coming from, what search terms they are using to arrive at your site, how many UNIQUE visitors are going to your site, and even what page they are leaving on!
Look into installing practical statistic keeping software. I have been using statcounter.com and I LOVE it. It's free. Not only does it impress the hell out of my clients, but the information is actually USEFUL when it comes to tweaking the sites pages so that the website makes more money!
google analytics is probably the most popular utility although I have not used it much. I recently installed both on a website so that I can compare the accuracy of the numbers, but I will save my comparison analysis for another blog!
At the time of this writing, his "visitors" had reached a whopping 30,863! Wow! Awesome right?
Well it would be if that number was accurate, but alas, that figure is WAY off.
Look folks, hit counters are useless, pointless, and unnecessary. Don't bother. The only thing they show you is how many times your page has been loaded.
"What do you mean dude?" Let me show you by example:
I created a copy of my homepage and installed a hit counter here: Copy of Home Page with Hit Counter
Go there and refresh / reload the page (F5 for my fellow shortcut keyboard junkies out there).
The number goes up each time you refresh the page! Basically, as one single user, you could theoretically refresh the page 100 times and the counter would appear as though 100 people have visited your site!
Now I hear some of you say "well that will make my site appear popular, thus giving my site credibility". To you I say "dude, there are about 100 other things that will increase the success of your website, hit counters make the site look tacky, and can distract your potential customers/clients from your website's overall objective (i.e. clicking the checkout button, of filling out an important form)".
Now I'm NOT saying that numbers are not important. However, how many times your page is viewed (refreshed or reloaded) is much less important than statistics such as where people are coming from, what search terms they are using to arrive at your site, how many UNIQUE visitors are going to your site, and even what page they are leaving on!
Look into installing practical statistic keeping software. I have been using statcounter.com and I LOVE it. It's free. Not only does it impress the hell out of my clients, but the information is actually USEFUL when it comes to tweaking the sites pages so that the website makes more money!
google analytics is probably the most popular utility although I have not used it much. I recently installed both on a website so that I can compare the accuracy of the numbers, but I will save my comparison analysis for another blog!
posted by Fritz and Scott at
10:58 AM
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