When it comes to Internet statistics the most important statistic at the end of the day is how many orders or inquiries did you get. However, your ability to improve your orders and site performance will depend on your understanding of your websites other underlying traffic statistics. Here are some things to watch out for.
First of all, forget about hits. Whenever someone requests a file it is a hit. If you visit a web page, then you are requesting several files all at once: the file for the page and the files for all the graphics on the page. By visiting one page on a site you are registering several hits. Hits is a very vague term and doesnt give you a good picture of what is happening on your site.
A more precise indicator of your traffic, and thus a more useful statistic, is the amount of unique visitors you receive each day. Internet statistics are never precise, but your number of unique visitors will give you a rough idea of how many people visited your website on any given day. Compare this number to the amount of orders or inquiries you get and you can figure out your conversion rate.
Another important Internet statistic to keep you eye on are the...