How do you define success? Just like professional golfers visualize the shot before they start the swing, when it comes to marketing, you need to define the ideal outcome or success before you start. As it relates to Internet-based marketing or advertising, success can come in many shapes and sizes. How are most Internet-based strategies measured? Which metric is most relevant? Should you measure hits, sessions, page views, unique visitors, session times or conversions? The answers are founded in the reason for the effort. If you are interested in building the market awareness of a company, then unique visitors might be the appropriate measurement. If you are selling a product or seeking contributions, then conversion would likely be your metric. What about a site where the content is video that features product placement? In that case, measurement might be session time - how long someone spent at the site watching that video.
What about other methods of measurement, like “hits” to a site? Hits represent the
number of times an object or element of the site was requested. One unique visitor to a site could trigger multiple “hits” just by visiting. That same user refreshing their screen triggers even more hits. Hits will represent the largest total when compared to visitors, sessions, page views, and most other Web metrics.
Therefore, it is not surprising that most like to boast a high number of “hits” because it makes the project appear successful. Even so, the number of “hits” is irrelevant and doesn’t measure success. You could have one million “hits” and only 100 unique visitors to a site. What is important is that before you spend money, time and effort on a Web-based solution, be sure you have spent time defining the ideal outcome. If you don’t know where you are going, how will you know if you got there? This is an important thing to remember when setting out to do anything in life: define where you’re going.