Taking the Mask Off Anonymous Web Visitors
May 3rd, 2007  by Jennifer LeClaire

By now, you are surely convinced that hits are a deceptive statistic and pageviews tell only part of the story when analyzing your Web traffic. The target of your Web site analytics mission should be — first and foremost — unique visitors. The problem, though, is dealing with the fact that not all unique visitors are created equal.By unique visitors, for those who are unfamiliar with the term, we mean individuals who come to your Web site looking for information, products or services. Marketers generally look at the number of unique visitors per day, per week, or per month to assess how many individuals are visiting their Web site or online store. These stats help determine whether their traffic is growing, stabilizing, or perhaps declining.

One of the key challenges with counting unique visitors is that some people browse your online venue with a cloak of anonymity — some more intentionally than others. While your Web analytics software may be able to reveal the referring site and which pages these anonymous visitors have viewed on your site, that could be about all you know regarding these secretive surfers.

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