Unique Visitors
Contents
- 1 Definition
- 2 What counts as a ‘visit’?
- 3 The difference between visits and unique visitors
- 4 How to calculate the number of unique visitors
- 5 Methods of tracking unique visitors
- 6 Challenges in measuring unique visitor numbers accurately
- 7 Importance for Online Marketing
- 8 Legal and privacy concerns in tracking unique visitors
- 9 Related links
- 10 Similar articles
Definition
Unique visitors is the term used for a marketing metric that records the number of individual viewers to one or more of a website’s pages within a selected time period.
This metric only counts the views in terms of the number of individual visitors who have viewed the website. It does not record the number of times each visitor viewed the website. Therefore, it provides a different indication of viewing statistics to the number of times that a page has been viewed.
It is important to note that the main flaw with this unit of measurement is the fact that the same user would be classed as two different unique visitors if they accessed your website from two different IP addresses. The same effect would occur if a user visited the site from two separate devices, or even from two different browsers (e.g. Chrome and Firefox).
The number of unique visitors to your website or page is calculated over a specific time period. Typically, this is within a month. Alternatively, you could measure how many unique visitors you acquire over anything from a couple of days to several months. Then, you can check your growth (or the success of any campaigns that you may have been implementing) by comparing the number of unique visitors that you currently receive against previous time periods of the same length.
What counts as a ‘visit’?
A ‘visit’ is simply when a visitor accesses one of your website pages from a source that is external to your website itself. This most commonly occurs when a user is on the URL of a different website, and then follows a link to your page from there. Or, a visitor may have also typed in the URL for your website directly.
A typical example of the former would be by finding your website from the results of a search engine.
Once a visitor has reached your website through this external source, this is the point that their ‘visit’ starts. This visit concludes at the point when they cease to be on your website URL. This could occur if they close the browser tab, or visit another website.
The difference between visits and unique visitors
The traffic that a website receives during a given period can be measured in two different ways. You can either calculate this in terms of visits or unique visitors.
The number of visits involves calculating how many times users visit your website. So, an individual could visit your website once, and then re-visit the site again the next day, and this would be classed as two visits by one visitor.
Whereas the number of unique visitors is a calculation of the number of individuals who have chosen to access your page, regardless of the number of times. As a result, this calculation provides a more accurate insight into the extent of the outreach that your site has achieved.
How to calculate the number of unique visitors
A unique visitor to a website is identified through the usage of cookies. This is because cookies contain their own unique browser identification. This anonymous identifier acts as an ID which can then be used to track any new visitors to a site.
There are several different online tools that organizations can use to calculate how many unique visitors their website receives. These tools provide users with an insight into the traffic levels of their company site, and how these rates are fluctuating over a given period.
Tools that can be used to undertake this type of data analytics include:
- Google Analytics
- Alexa
- Quantcast
- SimilarWeb
Screenshot with unique visitors digital analytics using analytics.google.com
Methods of tracking unique visitors
There are a number of methods commonly used to track unique website visitors, including:
- Cookies: Small data files stored on a user's device. They are unique to each visitor and can track their return visits.
- IP address tracking: This method identifies users by their IP addresses.
- User-agent analysis: This involves analyzing the user-agent string sent by browsers to identify unique visitors.
- Login data: For websites requiring user registration, tracking unique visitors through login data is highly accurate. However, it's only applicable to a portion of websites.
Challenges in measuring unique visitor numbers accurately
Accurately measuring unique visitors is challenging due to several factors:
- Cookie deletion and blocking: Many users regularly delete cookies or use browsers that block them, making it difficult to track repeat visits accurately.
- Use of multiple devices: A single user might access a website from various devices, leading to an overestimation of unique visitor counts.
- Shared devices: Conversely, multiple users on a shared device can be counted as one visitor, leading to underestimation.
- Dynamic IP addresses: IP addresses that change frequently can result in a single user being counted as multiple visitors.
Importance for Online Marketing
The number of unique visitors that your website receives can be used as a key performance indicator for your company.
This analytics of views and user traffic can be used to measure numerous important areas, including:
- The success of a content marketing campaign
- How well you are using SEO
- The impact that your social media channels are having on your overall company growth
- Whether your choice of keywords is accurate and up-to-date
- How much you can charge for an advert on your web page
- How much your audience is engaging with your site
- The benefits that your online marketing efforts are bringing to the company
This metric gives you a clearer insight into how successfully you are attracting customers, and can further be analyzed as to how many of the individuals that view your website eventually translate into new customers.
Furthermore, as with many types of web analytics, the number of unique visitors can act as a target or a goal that you can work towards. For example, you could simply aim for an increase in the number of unique visitors to your web page over a six-month period. Or, you could more specifically aim to increase this statistic through a specific channel, such as your company’s Instagram platform.
However, it is important to remember that unique visitors isn’t the only important metric to measure. Other metrics like conversion rate and bounce rate are also important to consider when measuring the effects of a marketing/SEO campaign.
Legal and privacy concerns in tracking unique visitors
With increasing awareness and regulations around user privacy, tracking unique visitors has become a complex legal issue. With internet users’s increasing interest in online privacy and recent laws including the GDPR in the EU and comparable legislation in other countries around the world being introduced, cookie-based tracking has become very controversial.
This has led various browsers, including Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome to take action and eventually phase out third-party cookies altogether. This change is driven by privacy concerns and the need for more transparent data collection practices and is set to cause a major shift in the digital advertising industry.
Websites must now focus on zero-party data, where users voluntarily share information. This shift requires a change in strategy for many digital marketers and webmasters, emphasizing the importance of user consent and privacy-compliant data collection methods.
Related links
- https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/seo-analysis-tools
- https://moz.com/blog/absolute-beginners-guide-to-google-analytics
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