Millions of Hits
You've heard it on television. Is it real — and is it even necessary for effective e-commerce?

It never fails. There I was, watching television, and on came a commercial in which the lead actor deplored his fate. He'd failed.

He'd failed to get "millions of hits" because he "forgot to tell the Web guys."

Where did this "millions of hits" idea come from, what is the truth of it, and what does it mean to you?

Who gets millions of hits on the Web?
Some months back, statistics were released for the most visited sites on the Web. At that time, Yahoo! was the most popular website on the 'Net, with 17 million hits per month.

Now, if Yahoo!, with its huge promotional budget, is getting "only" 17 million hits per month, what do you suppose the figures are for other websites?

You don't suppose Yahoo is funneling them all to one website, do you? Hmmm ... no.

Pity the poor office web promoter
I knew of a fellow whose boss had charged him with getting more hits to their company website. He'd managed in a short time to increase the hits and was desperately striving for more. As we congratulated him and advised him about how to increase visitors to his website, we learned what the problem was.

His boss had expected "millions of hits."

Millions of hits. It sounds great, doesn't it?

Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't.

When does a "hit" does not equal a "hit"?
One method of counting "hits" is to count every item downloaded from a website as a "hit." In fact, most stat-counting programs do this.

Frankly, the fact is that web pages usually consist of many separate elements — the page itself plus its graphics — each of which downloads separately.

Yes, each is a "hit"! A page with four graphics counts as five hits!

Personally, I count a hit as one page, regardless of the number of graphics. This is a more important statistic, don't you agree?

A "hit" does not equal a sale.
Don't tell the media, but the fact of the matter is that, depending on what you're selling, it isn't necessary to get millions of hits.

If you are a small shop selling a high-ticket item, ten purchasing customers will be superior any day to ten thousand lookie-loos.

Any day.