When reviewing your site analytics, it’s tough to always know what number(s) to focus on. And I can’t really tell you the right answer without knowing much about your business. There is one question I’m asked by 90% of the website owners I work with. What are site visits and pageviews? I can answer that, so you know what you’re looking at the next time you log in.
Site visits
Like the name implies, a site visit relates to the number of visitors your site has. This is tracked using individual IP addresses. No matter what anyone does on your site after loading the first page, they will always count as a single site visit.
They could be your biggest fan + click on dozens of pages. Or they could load a single page + then leave. Either way, one visit.
Pageviews
A pageview is defined as the number of times a page is viewed on your website.
If I went to your homepage, clicked over to the about page, came back to the homepage, loaded your latest blog post + then ended back on the homepage, your analytics would show a pageview of 3 for your homepage.
In that same example, your analytics would show a site visit of 1 for me.
That’s because I visited your site once + I landed on your homepage 3 different times. The about page would have a pageview of 1, and so would your latest blog post.
Why do these numbers matter?
Our hosting clients pay for a range of site visits per month. We don’t believe in charging for pageviews (like some hosting companies). Why? Because you want site visitors to spend time on your site + check out all of the pages! We’re not into dinging your business for being popular.
Beyond managed WordPress hosting, it’s good to compare site visits + pageviews to understand how many pages your site visitors are looking at. If you have 10 site visits in a day + 110 pageviews, you are averaging 11 pageviews per user, which is awesome.
You could also consider which pages are getting the most pageviews (to know what content is popular). Along with which pages are performing the worst for your business. A page with a low number of pageviews may benefit from a direct link on your more popular content. Or by sharing the direct link on social media to get users to see the content.