Exploding Myths: Part 1. Web Traffic – “Hit” Me With Your Best Shot

Over the last 12 years I have worked closely with real estate professionals to help them get the most out of web-based technology. During that period of time, I have seen any number and style of real estate “technology” vendors come and go. It would appear that in some cases the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Recently a number of conversations have popped up in the RE.Net regarding traffic and return on investment with regard to blogging and other web marketing efforts.

I’ve had this post along with a series of follow ups in my draft area for a while now, during that time a post emerged at the Real Estate Tomato blog tackling the issue. I highly recommend it and the extensive comments it has generated. A lively discussion is taking place regarding the definition of web traffic. Jim Cronin does a good job of providing the real definitions behind web traffic terminology. Terminology that, in many cases, is manipulated to sell real estate professionals a bill of goods. I’m constantly amazed that there are technology vendors and others that use the technical term “hits” to define the quantity of web traffic to a domain. That type of misrepresentation of facts should have ended a long time ago in my opinion. The definition of “hit” is a term that refers to the number of requests to a web server for individual items in a web site. Those items include each html page, each image, script file etc. etc. Anyone could load up a web page with several thousand single pixel transparent gifs, upload it to a web server and in very short order, make a convincing, albeit false claim to be a highly trafficked web site.

For the purpose of determining the quantity of traffic to your web site, these are some of the more important terms you should become familiar with.

• “Unique Visitors” — The number of unique people who visit your site (a visitor to a site can create multiple page views)
• “Page Views” — The number of pages viewed in total.
• “Average Time On Site” — How long a visitor spent during a session on the site or a particular page.
• “Entry / Exit Points or “Bounce Rates” — where did they enter and what path did they take through the site, if any. In some cases, a visitor will “bounce” right back out of the site, rendering that unique visitor and page view of no value.

If you’re working with a reputable web site vendor, you should have access to the log files to your site, along with tools to analyze and understand the data. It’s something you should spend time on for the purpose of redeveloping your content and gauging important trends etc. It’s important to remember not to get too hung up on the intricacies and nuances of every little piece of data. In the end, a great deal of what you see in an analytic session has no bearing on your real goal, which is to generate “QUALITY” traffic and “QUALITY” leads. Tomorrow, in Part 2 of “Exploding Myths,” I will address the issue of web leads.