visits vs unique visitors

Unique Visitors: Understanding and Targeting Your Competitors’ Audience

What is the unique visitors metric?

Unique visitors is a website metric that shows the total number of visitors to a site; counting only their first visit. If they return to the site at a later time, any additional visits are not counted in this number.

As one of the most telling website KPIs, it’s something every business should track and compare with competitors’ website and engagement metrics.

Now you know what it means, let’s talk about why it matters so much.

What is unique visitors used for?

This standard engagement metric is essential for analyzing web traffic and planning your digital strategy . It’s also referred to as UVPM, which is short for unique visitors per month. Google Analytics is considered one of the most common analytics tools; it provides a unique visitors metric for your site. With Similarweb’s analytics platform, you can also examine your competitors’ unique visitor stats, along with other useful insights that allow you to drill down and unpack their successes online.

Unique visitors comes in handy in a range of situations, including:

• To data and BI analysts tracking online activity in their industry or competitive landscape .
• Doing a competitive analysis of a rival’s website.
• For publishers assessing the exposure of a competitor’s piece of content.
• Both strategy and investment teams measure a brand’s reach.
• Benchmarking industry traffic and engagement stats.
• To see which companies achieve success with inbound marketing.
• For advertisers who need to quantify the impact of another company’s campaign.

Why is the unique visitors metric important for your business?

To understand the exposure and reach of a website, marketers and researchers look at page views. Similarweb’s equivalent, the number of visits received by a website is a key metric for analyzing that website’s traffic. This information is critical, for example:

– If you are a publisher and want to show the number of impressions an ad will receive on your website.

– If you are part of the user journey team at an ecommerce website seeking to capitalize on each visit as an opportunity to convert a visitor into a buying customer.

To help you better understand a website’s audience analysis , such as size and reach, you need to look at the unique visitors metric. In the simplest of terms, this number represents how many pairs of eyes viewed a particular website during a specified period.

Dividing the number of visits by the number of unique visitors yields the number of visits per individual user (also provided by Similarweb), which you can use to analyze engagement rates on a website and understand how many times every single user visited that website.

Unique visitors, visitors, and visits – what’s the difference?

It’s easy to get confused with these web analytics metrics. Although they’re similar, it’s critical to understand the difference.

Visits: Counts the number of single visits to a website or page, regardless of their origin. The same visitor may have several visits to the same page.

Similarweb calculates total visits within a defined period and region. Each time a visitor accesses one or more pages, it counts as a visit. Subsequent views of the same page are included until the user is inactive for at least 30 minutes.

Visitors: In Google Analytics, visits from the same browser or terminal are defined as coming from the same visitor if they arrive on the same day . In other words. “Visitors” count the users that visit your site in a single day. The following day, the system starts counting again. Whoever was at your site before is not recognized as a returning visitor but simply counted as a visitor again.

Unique Visitors: The system recognizes the visit’s origin – the visitor – over a specified period. Each visitor visiting your site or page within the specified period is counted only once. Let’s take a closer look at the methodology Similarweb and Google Analytics uses to identify website unique visitors and collect the information.

How are Unique Visitors calculated?

There is no standard in the market for measuring the number of unique visitors; hence there are slight discrepancies between tools.

• Google Analytics and its cookies

Most of you are familiar with Google’s definition: “Unique visitors is the number of unduplicated (counted only once) visitors to your website over the course of a specified time period.”

To be more precise, Google identifies the same IP address by placing a cookie. Google can’t identify the actual person. If the same visitor enters from a different device or browser, each will count as a unique visitor. Another scenario that renders this method slightly inaccurate: users can erase cookies, or different family members can enter a site from the same device and browser.

• Similarweb Unique Visitors Per Month (UVPM) identification method

Unlike other traffic analysis tools , Similarweb does not rely on cookies , which are often considered an unstable data collection mechanism, as explained above.

As a result, cookie-based technologies tend to overestimate the number of unique visits; they will often show higher numbers than the Similarweb software.

Similarweb collects data from a variety of sources, including a large panel composed of users who share their anonymous clickstream data. Each device in the panel receives its own unique ID, which translates into a unique user.

Under Monthly Unique Visitors , you will see the number of users who visited the specified web location one or more times during the monthly period.

• Similarweb Daily Unique Visitors – are they different?

Again, Similarweb’s technology does not use cookies to identify Unique Users; therefore, the differentiation between a visitor and a unique visitor isn’t really relevant. We refer to visitors as daily unique visitors.

Unique visitors function as a basis for many of our traffic and engagement metrics. We calculate unique visitors for desktop and mobile web, which means the traffic for the calculator is the sum of both.

Monitoring daily unique visitors lets you improve website stickiness and engagement, evaluate peak traffic days, and much more.

• Closely related metric: Visits per Unique Visitor

The next metric to look at in your traffic analysis is Visits per Unique Visitor if you want to understand your unique visitors‘ behavior and engagement. With Similarweb, you can choose a time frame and region and monitor how many visits a user made and how many pages they viewed on average.

But that’s a topic for another post. Read here how to leverage Page Views and benchmark against your competitors .

How to use competitor’s unique visitors metric to amplify your digital strategy

Here’s one thing to remember about your target audience : It’s also your competitors’ target audience. So if you want to increase your unique visitors, you need to look at successful best-in-class companies along with players in your market showing significant growth.

Step 1 – Establish key competitors to analyze

First, identify which competitors generate the most unique visitors. They could be industry leaders or rising stars. At this point, it’s not about doing a full-blown competitive analysis, we’re simply going to find those people showing the highest number of unique visitors.

Ready? Then, let’s begin.

Action: List between 5-10 competitors to analyze as part of this task.

Tip : You can use Similarweb to identify market leaders and high-growth sites in your industry.

Step 2 – Establish the industry average

Understanding the industry average is a great starting point when setting any goals. In the next section, we list a few industry averages for the UVPM metric. But to gain an apples-for-apples representation and build a measurable strategy; establish your industry benchmarks.

Tip: In the same place on the Similarweb platform you can grab a snapshot of your industry benchmarks.

Here, you can view the standard industry benchmark for unique visitors, monthly visits, visit duration, pages per visit, and bounce rate. If you want, you can drill down and analyze specific competitors to get an idea of their individual wins and losses.

Step 3 – Do a quick competitive analysis of traffic and engagement stats

Unique visitors is one of the crucial engagement metrics to include in your analysis. But, it doesn’t always show the full story. At this point, you also need context, as this is where the biggest opportunity to find insights exist.

Action: Look at key metrics, like:

• Unique visitors
• Page visits
• Bounce rate
• Time on page

You can use these additional engagement metrics to get a more granular view and record the metrics to give you a point-in-time view that you can refer back to.

Here’s a quick example of how this exercise can help you find opportunities to grow the number of unique visits to your site.

If your number of unique visitors is higher than that of your competitors, but your bounce rate is also higher, this raises the question of how well your site meets the visitors’ expectations.

• Are the visitors you attract the right persona for your business?
• Are your meta descriptions aligned with the content on the page or do they mislead?
• Is your site navigation simple and is it easy for people to find what they need?
• Are your consumer journeys considered and clearly mapped?

There are a lot of questions you can ask once you unpack these metrics. But before you can break things down, it’s important you grab these other metrics to give you a complete picture of what’s happening on a site.

Step 4 – Examine marketing channels that drive the most unique visitors

Next, review rival’s marketing channels to see which drives the most traffic and unique visitors to their site.

Helpful: Make sure you record your findings in an easy format. Our downloadable competitive analysis frameworks are handy for this purpose.

Let’s say competitor A receives a significant amount of traffic from display ads; while your ad campaign performance is average. Rather than comparing all your competitor’s ads, you can now focus on analyzing this particular company’s campaigns because you know they work.

• Which keywords they target
• What they offer
• The types of CTAs they use
• How they design and word their ads

Similarly, you might discover a rival with a high number of social referrals, specifically from one platform. You can again, hone in and unpack their social strategy to emulate their success and get more unique visitors to your site.

Using Similarweb, you can view the marketing channels any business uses to drive traffic to their site. Along with each channel’s relative success. By clicking on any channel – let’s take display ads as an example, you can drill down even further to see the types of creatives being used, top publishers , landing pages, and more.

You can use the information from this process can help fine-tune your digital strategy. And help you understand your market position in all aspects of website traffic to identify areas of improvement too.

What is a good number of unique visitors based on my industry?

Before we answer this question, let’s remember that even companies in the same industry can be very different, to the point they often pursue different goals. A fashion website offering exclusive designer accessories does not need to generate the same amount of unique visitors as a popular consumer brand of affordable clothing.

Measuring unique visitors to your site is essential as an indicator of how successful you are driving traffic to your site . But it would be a mistake to stop there. What’s even more important is the quality of your traffic.

So, what are considered high-quality visitors for you? Those who will buy your products, use your service, engage with your website, and return for more. This is your target audience – and to attract them, you need to know who they are and what they are looking for. Successful competitors with the same target audience already know . That’s why they are a perfect place for you to start.

Similarweb’s dataset provides information that identifies your website’s demographics and your users’ online behavioral patterns.

You are not operating in a bubble, and the audience is not yours alone. Once you understand that, you also understand that viewing the stats for your own site, as Google Analytics lets you do, does not provide you with the full picture.

To get you started, here are the industry benchmarks we promised:

Average monthly Unique Visitors per key industries

Below are the monthly unique visitors benchmarks for five key industries. It’s important to check the changes on a monthly basis to ensure you’re always reviewing the most up-to-date figures.

Average monthly unique visitors for ecommerce and shopping websites, Aug 2022

Based on the top 100 ecommerce sites globally, the average number of unique visitors in the ecommerce industry is 122.5 million.

Average monthly unique visitors for finance websites, Aug 2022

Based on the top 100 finance sites globally, the average number of unique visitors in the finance industry is 311.2 million.

Average monthly unique visitors for news and media websites, Aug 2022

Based on the top 100 sites globally, the average number of unique visitors in the news and media industry is 410.7 million.

Average monthly unique visitors for CPG websites, Aug 2022

Based on the top 100 sites globally, the average number of unique visitors in the CPG industry is 1.166 million.

Average monthly unique visitors for TV and Streaming websites, Aug 2022

Go a Step Further with Similarweb

Similarweb Digital Research Intelligence can help with every stage of your analysis. And, if you’re interested, you can dig a little deeper, and discover audience demographics of the unique visitor metrics – either for your own site or that of your rivals.

In each stage of the 4-step process, you can use Similarweb to quickly view and record key website and engagement metrics. If you want to quickly track your performance or check in on how your rivals are performing at any point in time – Similarweb Digital Research Intelligence should be your tool of choice.

To get under the hood and explore the demographics of any site’s visitors, you can use the audience analysis tool to view things like:

Here, you see a complete set of demographics for a site. This includes traffic share by country, bounce rates, visit duration, page views, growth, and traffic share . Next, you get to see gender and age stats, visitor browsing behaviors, and interests.

Audience Overlap

If you want to benchmark unique visitors with key players in a market, the audience overlap feature is the quickest and easiest way to visualize how you stack up.

Here, you can compare up to five sites at a time, and see the respective UVPM for each company. At a glance, you can view audience overlap, which is the cross-visitation of a shared audience, and unreached potential visitors too.

When combined with your initial unique visitors analysis, traffic & engagement – these demographics give you x-ray vision into any site, its marketing strategies, and its target audience.

I know it’s a lot of data – but you know what they say?

Wrapping up: Unique Visitors

For any business, the unique visitors metric is a powerful KPI. It measures how successful (or not) a company is at driving new traffic to its website.

However, just looking at UVPM alone is not enough to prove success or improve performance. It’s one piece of a larger puzzle that can only be understood when complete.

Follow the steps we’ve outlined, and start leveraging the unique visitor metric to analyze competitors and outline a plan to increase your net-new traffic – today.

Boost Your Market Research with Similarweb

Enjoy 360° visibility into your industry and instantly adapt to market changes

What are unique visitors?

A unique visitor is a person who has visited a website at least once and is counted only once in the reporting time period.

What does UVPM stand for?

UVPM is short for unique visitors per month. It’s a common website and engagement benchmark that tells you how many unique visitors came to a site. It excludes repeat visitors and only counts their first visit.

How do you analyze unique visitors?

To analyze unique visitors, divide the number of visits by the number of unique visitors to yield the number of visits per individual user.

What is a high-quality visitor?

A high-quality visitor is one that will buy your products, use your service, engage with your website, and return for more.

Related Posts

Marketing OKRs: How to Stay Focused and Hit Your Targets

Digital Marketing Strategy: A Beginner’s Guide

What is a Marketing Plan and How Do You Create One?

How to Conduct a Social Media Competitor Analysis: 5 Quick Steps

How to Do an Ecommerce Competitor Analysis in 2024

Industry Benchmark Analysis 2024: Is Your Marketing Strategy Aligned?

Wondering what similarweb can do for you.

Here are two ways you can get started with Similarweb today!

Visits, visitors, unique visitors… what are the differences for the web analyst?

Today’s Web analytics solutions offer a multitude of measurement tools with comprehensive analysis options. Identified Visitors, Unique Visitors, Visitors, Visits , Viewed Pages or downloads are only a small part of it. At first glance, these standard measures seem very similar or even interchangeable, but they all say something different. To help you see more clearly, this article briefly presents the most important standard metrics and their meaning in AT Internet’ s Analytics Suite .

Visitors / Unique visitors / Identified visitors:

The term “ visitor” refers to a user who visits a website . However, a visitor is not considered as a single person but as a browser or a terminal . For example, a single user can access a website via different browsers (such as Google Chrome, Firefox or Microsoft Edge), different computers (at work and at home) or different terminals (smartphone and laptop).

If a visitor visits a page once in the morning and once in the evening, this user is counted as a single visitor with two visits. This same user will be considered a different visitor if they return to the site the next day. If we want a visitor who returns on another day to be counted only once, we must look at the metric unique visitors.

Unique visitor

The measurement of unique visitors is based on cookies . A cookie is a file placed on a browser that contains an anonymous identifier. This ID can be used to uniquely identify a browser.

As a result of this measurement method (which is the basis of all current analytical systems), inaccuracies may occur. For example, a browser may refuse to accept cookies, or a user may decide to delete them.

In most cases, however, a terminal has a cookie and is included in the calculation of unique visitors.

In the Analytics Suite , we distinguish between unique visitors who accept cookies and unique visitors who do not accept cookies. The latter category of visitors can be determined over a one-day period using the fingerprint method. The total number of unique visitors is therefore the sum of these two types of unique visitors.

In AT Internet’s Analytics Suite , you will find the analysis of unique visitors in the User Insights section. You can evaluate the frequency of visits, the retention rate or the terminals used.

Unique visitors are identical to visitors on a daily basis (Day 1: Unique visitors = Visitors = 3). If we now consider a period of several days, we obtain 8 Visitors (3+1+2+2+2+2, the Day Visitors are added together), and 3 Unique Visitors (deduplicated).

In the Analytics Suite , unique visitors can also be analysed on multiple websites (level 1).

Identified visitor

Identified visitors are measured using a unique identifier that is sent in the tagging when connecting to an authenticated space (login + password) and are common to all platforms (computer, tablets, smartphones…). It is this unique identifier that allows the cross-device analyses available in the User Insights module of the Analytics Suite.

Identified visitors should therefore not be considered as unique visitors. A unique identification of a unique user on different devices and browsers is only possible if the user actively identifies themselves. This is possible through a connection and can then be analysed using the “Identified Visitor” metric.

Visits, page views

A visit is defined as a visit to a website where at least one page has been loaded. Visits indicate a continuous process of using a website and should not be confused with the number of visitors, as a visitor may make several visits to the same site.

It should be noted, however, that the period during which each visit is counted only once may vary considerably.

AT Internet calculates this metric in this way: if a visitor does not perform a new action within 30 minutes, a visit is considered complete. The number of visits to a website is expressed in relation to a specific period (day, week, month…).

The visit is fundamental for the preparation of most analyses. The visit provides you with information on navigation (initial page, content viewed, exit page) and behaviour (duration, loads/page views, bounce rate, etc.).

This illustration shows two visits on five pages with all the associated information:

There are different types of visits:

• Total number of visits: Total number of visits in a given period
• Incoming visits: Visits with at least two pages viewed
• Bounce visits: visits with only one page viewed

The Analytics Suite can also evaluate visits without page loading, for example if a user has only seen one advertising element.

Limits of the “Visit” metric.

Imagine that a user visits and then leaves a website by turning off his computer or changing sites. 20 minutes later, he returns to the first site: he will always be considered to be in the same visit, which means that only one visit will be counted. On the other hand, if a visitor accesses a website through Microsoft Edge and returns to the site via Firefox 10 minutes later, two visits will be counted because the user will not be identified as the same visitor (the cookie varies from one browser to another).

A visit is not automatically closed when the browser is closed. In the field of digital analytics, it is unfortunately not possible to determine the exact time of exit from the site, because the user cannot send a specific message to the servers indicating that he has left the site.

This problem affects all web analytics solutions. Thus, as suggested by the DAA (Digital Analytics Association), AT Internet terminates a visit after 30 minutes of inactivity but this duration can be configured according to the needs of the site. This happens regardless of whether the browser is locked.

In AT Internet’s Analytics Suite , only one source of traffic is assigned to a visit, which is unique and unchanging. This means that the first source of a visit or the initiator of the visit is valid for the entire duration of the visit.

A page view is the loading of a page from a website or application. Each page viewed generates a hit that is sent to AT Internet. Each of these occurrences increases the “page views” metric by 1. the following graph illustrates its operating principle:

1. The User requests to load a page on the Site’s host server.

2. This server returns the page content (images, texts, etc. and the JavaScript code of the Internet AT tag).

3. The JavaScript tag is executed on the online user’s computer and collects information.

4. The tag requests an image on the Internet AT server and transmits the collected information as parameters.

5. The Internet AT server returns the requested image (1 pixel x 1 pixel, transparent).

If two tags were placed on the same page, each load of that page would be counted twice.

In summary:

A visit is a user’s journey through the site or application. A visit contains one or more page views. As soon as a user is inactive for 30 minutes because he has left the site or remained on the same page, a visit is considered complete.

A visitor is a user of a website. If a visitor visits a page several times a day , with interruptions of more than 30 minutes, AT Internet considers him/her as a unique visitor who has generated several visits. If a visitor visits the website on two different days, he or she will be counted as two visitors. If the AT Internet cookie is deleted after each visit, this visitor is considered a new visitor for each new visit.

On a single day, unique visitors correspond to the definition of “normal” visitors. However, if you look at a period of more than one day, these values differ due to the recognition of cookies. If a visitor has a cookie on his browser and visits the site twice on different dates, this visitor will be recognised as a unique visitor and counted only once in the analysis period.

Pictured example: A visit to a website can be compared to a visit to a hotel: a guest (unique visitor) can be a guest of a hotel several times during a month (visitor) and can enter and leave the hotel several times during a stay (several visits). In the hotel, the guest will move to different rooms (page views).

Gross range:

Gross reach refers to the sum of contacts made by an advertising medium during a given period on a target group. It does not take into account the fact that some people may have been in contact with the media several times, since, unlike the net reach, each contact is counted. The raw scope therefore says nothing about the exact number of people affected.

The raw scope depends on the information to be determined. Here are some examples:

• Raw scope of a website > Number of Visits
• Gross reach of an advertising banner > Number of banner loads
• Gross scope of an article on a website > Number of pages viewed (or uploaded)

Net reach refers to the number of people that an advertising medium reaches at least once during a certain evaluation period. It is expressed as an absolute value or as a percentage of the population. While the gross reach counts all contacts, the net reach deducts double or multiple contacts to give only the “exact” number of people reached by a publication.

In our Analytics Suite , the net reach is the value of unique visitors .

More than just measures: key performance indicators (KPIs)

You now know some of the most important key indicators for web analytics. For more information, see our more detailed article on the metrics analysed in Analytics Suite 2.

Need advice on defining the most relevant metrics for your objectives? Thanks to our free downloadable guide, you will learn how to define and analyse the right KPI’s according to your digital strategy:

DA Blog Editorial Team AT Internet’s editorial team and a diverse group of blog contributors work together to bring you insightful articles about digital analytics. Have feedback for us, or ideas to share? Want to see more on a certain topic? Get in touch!

Related Posts

5 Steps for Launching a Data Project in Your Organisation

Data Sampling: Quality Over Quantity

AT Internet’s Data Health Checklist

Comments are closed.

• Implementation & Tagging
• Analytics Tips & Tools
• Mobile, Apps & Cross-Device
• Data Governance & Strategy
• Digital marketing
• Beyond Analytics
• Analytics Suite
• Happening @AT
• AT INTERNET.COM

Page Views vs Visits: What’s the Difference (Beginner’s Guide)?

Tools like Google Analytics are essential for any website owner. However, if you’re new to tracking analytics, trying to interpret all the metrics on offer can seem overwhelming. For instance, the difference between page views vs visits can be hard to understand, as the terms sound very similar.

It’s important to clear up this confusion and know what you’re tracking, in order to make data-driven decisions. Fortunately, learning the distinctions between these two metrics isn’t hard, and it may change how you perceive your website’s success.

In this article, we’ll explore page views vs visits and discuss whether they can impact your search engine optimization (SEO) . We’ll also show you where to find these numbers in Google Analytics. Let’s go!

Understanding page views vs visits

A page view occurs whenever someone loads your site in their web browser. For instance, let’s say that a visitor finds your blog post through a search engine. However, one of their browser extensions prevents some of the content from displaying correctly, so they have to reload the page. In that instance, your analytics report will register two page views, even though the same visitor generated them (and in a short period of time).

On the other hand, a page visit happens whenever someone reaches your site from an external source, outside of your website’s domain . For instance, if a user finds your article online and then reloads the page, that still counts as one visit. However, if they navigate away from your website, search for a new keyword in Google, and then land on your page again, this will count as two visits.

To make sense of these metrics, it’s also important to take a look at your site’s ‘sessions.’ A session is the total time a user spends on your website within a certain period. During one session, your analytics tool will typically track all activities such as views and engagement with elements or forms.

A session typically expires after 30 minutes of inactivity ( at least as Google Analytics defines “sessions ). It’s a useful metric to track, as it can give more context to your views and visits.

Why understanding page views vs visits matters for your website

The primary reason these two metrics matter is that they can make you aware of potential problems on your site. For instance, contrary to popular belief, high page views don’t always mean you’re reaching a broad audience.

For example, suppose that your page views are high while visits are low. That could indicate possible user experience (UX) issues on your website. Your visitors might find your navigation confusing , or be unable to locate the information they need, causing them to visit the same pages repeatedly.

On the other hand, some pages might experience high views due to the nature of the content. For instance, readers tend to refer to instructional materials multiple times, so your tutorials might show higher views than other kinds of pages.

In some cases, high page views are a desirable metric, especially if you monetize your site with pay-per-view (PPV) ads. However, it’s generally best to strike a balance between page views and visits, in order to ensure that you’re providing the best possible experience on your site.

On the other hand, high page visits are generally positive, as they indicate that your website is popular. However, if your visits are high while the views are low, it could mean that your audience is not staying around long enough to convert. If that’s the case, it’s worth reviewing your CTAs and value proposition, to make sure they’re clear and engaging.

How page views and visits impact SEO

As isolated metrics, page views and visits are unlikely to be direct ranking factors. However, they might still influence your SEO to some degree. Search engines can use these numbers to calculate other significant tanking factors, such as the UX on your site.

For example, Google bots might interpret high page views as a sign that your website is popular. Organic traffic spikes can significantly boost your SEO, especially if referred from high-authority sites. However, the exact formula behind this calculation is unknown, so we can’t be such just how influential these metrics are.

What we do know is that Google favors websites that are engaging and easy to navigate. A high page view to visits ratio generally indicates that users are spending a lot of time on your site, which is a positive ranking factor. However, if your high page views result from poor UX or irrelevant content, that could negatively impact your SEO.

How to measure page views and visits with Google Analytics

Google Analytics gives you a wealth of information about your website. Provided that you’ve inserted your tracking code correctly (or used a Google Analytics plugin ), you can track all activities on your site, including page views and visits.

Note that Google Analytics uses slightly different terminology to describe visits. In general, it treats visits as ‘sessions’, and unique visitors as ‘users’. The latter metric is also broken down into two categories: new and returning visitors. This can all be a little confusing at first, but it helps to remember that ‘sessions’ will always be equal to or higher than ‘users’ (as the same person can visit multiple times).

You can access these details via Audience > Overview :

Google Analytics also enables you to track new and returning visitors in more detail. When you navigate to Behavior > New vs. Returning , you can compare metrics such as the average session duration, bounce rate, and conversions:

Note that you can also track a metric called ‘new users,’ which is not the same as ‘new visitors’. Google explains that it measures new user activity based on cookie usage, however, so these metrics will be very similar.

To learn more, check out our guide to the Google Analytics interface .

The concept of page views vs visits can seem confusing at first. However, once you understand the difference, it can help you identify potential issues on your website. For instance, high page views could indicate that your visitors can’t find the information they need, so it’s worth tracking it in conjunction with other data.

Let’s quickly recap the distinction between these two metrics:

• A page view occurs whenever a browser loads your site. Therefore, one visitor can generate many page views.
• A visit occurs whenever someone arrives at your page from an external source, such as Google search results or another website.

To start tracking all of these metrics, you can add Google Analytics to your site or use another web analytics tool.

Do you have any questions about page views vs visits? Let us know in the comments section below!

By John Hughes

Themeisle contributor.

John is a self-taught WordPress designer and developer. He has been working with the CMS for over a decade, and has experience operating as a freelancer and as part of an agency. He’s dabbled in everything from accessible design to website security. Plus, he has extensive knowledge of online business topics like affiliate marketing.

Updated on:

You can check also:.

10 Best Free Blogging Sites Hand-Tested for 2024…I Tried to Build a Blog for Free

All In One SEO vs Yoast SEO: Which Is Better in 2024

Naming Images for SEO: Here’s the Right Way to Do It

The SEO Framework vs Yoast SEO: Which Is Better in 2024?

How to Send a Mass Email in Gmail

How to Increase Organic Traffic to Your Website (7 Strategies)

7 Most Profitable Blog Niches for 2024 (Based On Real Data)

7 Best Grammarly Alternatives for Issue-Free Writing

10+ Most Popular Types of Blogs: Your Blogging Inspiration for 2024

7 Best Gmail Alternatives in 2024 (Most Are Free)

How to Use Gmail With Your Own Domain Name (Free Method)

How to Get a Free Email Domain: 4 Easy Methods

Do I Need a Website for My Business? 10 Reasons Why the Answer is Yes

13 Best Keyword Research Tools in 2024 (Including Free Options)

3 Ways to Use Canva on WordPress Sites – From Basic to Brilliant

3 Beginner-Friendly Ways to Reorder Posts in WordPress

20+ Blogging Statistics for 2024: Trends & Insights

How to Create a Blog Post Outline That Works! (In 6 Steps)

Or start the conversation in our Facebook group for WordPress professionals . Find answers, share tips, and get help from other WordPress experts. Join now (it’s free)!

• Privacy Policy

Most Searched Articles

Starting a blog without spending a penny is absolutely possible, and you’re in the right place to find out how to do it. Over the years, I’ve experimented with dozens of different blogging sites and tested how they perform for various purposes ...

How to Create and Start a WordPress Blog in 15 Minutes or Less (Step by Step)

Ready to create a WordPress blog? You've made an outstanding choice! Learning how to start a blog can be your path to an exciting new adventure. Lucky for you, WordPress is an excellent tool you can use for that. It's free, user-friendly, powerful, ...

The Complete Personal Blog Guide: How to Start a Personal Blog on WordPress

In this tutorial, we will lead you through all the steps you need to take in order to start a personal blog that is cheap, effective, good-looking, and that will set you up for future success. This is your ultimate guide to a personal WordPress blog ...

Handpicked Articles

How to make a wordpress website: step-by-step guide for beginners.

Even though it might not seem like so at first, knowing how to make a website from scratch is a must-have skill for today's small business owners. The following guide takes you by the hand and shows you all the steps to getting the job done with ...

7 Fastest WordPress Hosting Companies Compared (2024)

The web host you choose to power your WordPress site plays a key role in its speed and performance. However, with so many claiming to offer the fastest WordPress hosting out there, how do you decide which company to use? In this post, we'll look at ...

How to Install XAMPP and WordPress Locally on Windows PC

Want to install XAMPP and WordPress – aka. install WordPress locally? This is a great idea if you want a development site that can be used for testing or other purposes. XAMPP lets you run a website from your very own computer. And once you ...

Unique Visitors in Google Analytics: All You Need To Know

Google Analytics 4 measures website visitors differently than Universal Analytics.

The new event-based data model changes the way in which Google Analytics shows returning and new users on the main tool’s interface.

This changes the definition of unique visitors in Google Analytics 4 , but don’t worry - we’ll show you everything you need to know about unique users visiting your site right in this guide.

What Are Unique Visitors?

Unique visitors are defined as the number of unduplicated individual users who visit your website over the course of a specified time period.

Google Analytics unique visitors are one of the most important web analytics metrics and shows you insights regarding the growth and evolution of your site’s audience.

An increase in the total number of unique visitors means that your site is being accessed by new people over a certain time period.

This information can be used to determine the engagement of your site content, the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, and user behaviour based on traffic sources.

Official Google Analytics Definition of Unique Visitors

Google defines unique visitors as the “total number of unique users who logged an event.”

Back in Universal Analytics (compare UA to GA4 metrics here), the “Total Number of Users” metric was measured as a whole based on unique sessions (users that had at least one session within the selected date range).

In GA4, user visits can only be considered “unique” if:

• A first-party cookie is stored on the user’s browser.
• They trigger an engaged session event (stay on a web page for 10 seconds or more, visit another page, or trigger a conversion event).

How Does Google Analytics Identify Unique Visitors?

Google Analytics 4 determines unique visits by storing browser cookies when they open a session on your website.

GA4 cookies store a client ID in a first-party cookie called _ga. This cookie assigns an identifier to the new session, which helps the tool distinguish between a new user and a returning visitor.

Although the default expiration time of the ga cookie is 2 years , it is possible for web owners to change these parameters in order to comply with privacy regulations imposed by government authorities.

It is worth noting that some browsers, such as Safari, enforce limitations on the lifespan of cookies if users do not return to a certain website.

Unique Visitors vs New Users

Google Analytics 4 allows you to track unique visitors to your website through cookies, but what if one user comes back? Will they be tracked as a unique visitor?

No, as long as the first-party cookie with its unique identifier is still stored on their browser.

New users in Google Analytics 4 are the total number of users who launch or open your website for the first time. In order to classify website visitors as unique users, GA4 takes the following factors into account:

• The user need to have a new unique user ID stored through cookies.
• A first_visit or first_open event needs to be triggered.

Both conditions must be met in order to count users as new visitors.

If, for instance, a user triggers a first_open event, but their user ID has been already stored by GA4 in the past, they will be counted as a returning user.

Limitations of Unique Visitors Data in GA

Google’s way of measuring unique visitors is not perfect. Returning users can be counted as unique visitors sometimes, which causes inaccurate data reporting.

In the following scenarios, Google Analytics 4 will encounter anomalies while trying to measure unique visitors:

• Cross-device cookie tracking: if the same user accesses your website through multiple devices or a different operating system, it will be counted as a new unique visitor.
• Multiple individuals using the same device: if more than one person uses a single device to see your website, they will count as a single person towards the Unique Visitors web metric.
• Incognito browsing modes contribute to inaccuracies: Incognito Browsing Modes, such as Google Chrome Incognito Mode , causes users to be seen as new users, even if they are returning visitors.
• Local laws/regulations that make data collection limited: privacy regulations in some countries establish that websites can only store cookies if users give their consent. Google Analytics 4 has a cookie Consent Mode , which provides users with the option to get their user sessions tracked by cookies or not.

Where to Find Unique Visitors in Google Analytics 4

You can see how many unique visitors your site gets simply by logging into your Google Analytics account.

After you log in to Google Analytics account, go to the main Home Tab. There, you will see a graphic that shows you both Users and New Users.

“Users” refers to each unique visitor your website has obtained during the past few days.

Remember that you can change the date range of the graphic to get monthly, weekly or daily insights into the Unique Visitor metric.

If you have recently made the switch from UA to GA4, remember that the tools do not track unique visitors equally, even if the term “Users” appear the same.

GA4 tracks unique visitors based on events, whereas UA tracks unique visitors based on sessions.

This is all you need know about unique visitors concepts and definitions in Google Analytics 4. Keep in mind that unique visitor metrics should be analyzed, interpreted and checked based on your own website’s audience and goals.

Are Unique Visitors Same as Unique Pageviews?

No, unique visitors and unique pageviews are not the same. Unique pageviews are the number of times that certain web pages have been viewed by a unique visitor over a certain time period. This means that if a unique visitor sees 3 different pages, Google Analytics 4 will count it as 3 page views, but only a single Unique Page View.

BIO Paul Jarvis, author + designer

Recent blog posts

• I made a mistake
• Reducing our AWS bill by $100,000
• How to Enable and Use Link Tracking Protection in iOS 17
• How we built our referral program
• Why Fathom Analytics doesn’t have a free plan

Tired of Google Analytics? Try Fathom Analytics, free for 30 days:

Start a free trial

Switch to a better Google Analytics alternative

Fathom Analytics is simpler, more accurate and privacy-first. Import your Google Analytics data (UA and GA4), add our single line of code, and watch real-time analytics from your site pour in.

Start a 30-day, unlimited free trial to see how simple analytics can be.

Get started

Check out our full-featured, live demo to see how our software works.

• How it works
• vs Google Analytics
• About Fathom
• Help centre
• Blog & news
• Podcast: Above Board
• How we process data
• What's new?
• Legal compliance

Unique Visitors

Unique Visitors are the individually-counted users of a website . This KPI in online marketing and media planning shows how many people have visited a website during a certain period of time. Unique visitors shouldn't be confused with Visits and Page Impressions.

• 1 Determining the unique visitors of a website
• 2 Differentiation from other terms
• 3 Inaccuracies/measurement errors
• 4 Relevance to search engine optimization
• 5 Web Links

Determining the unique visitors of a website

Cookies are utilized to determine the number of unique visitors to a website. When users visit a website from their Browser , a cookie is stored on their computer. This contains data, which can be used to uniquely identify the respective browser. If a user visits a website repeatedly, this is automatically registered by the cookie. Although he visits the site several times, he is only considered as one unique visitor. At the same time, he will of course create several visits and even more Page Impressions .

Differentiation from other terms

The terms “Unique Visitors,” “Visits” and “Page Impressions” are frequently confused. They are directly related to each other, however, they each refer to completely different parameters:

• Unique Visitors: Number of people who visit a website (multiple visits of one person are not counted here)
• Visits: Number of visits to a website (including multiple visits of a person)
• Page Impressions: number of pages viewed on a website (each page viewed, including double page views)

The following example will illustrate this. Let’s assume a website gets the following visits in one day:

Visitors 1 visits the website at 10:00 a.m., 1:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. and views two subpages. Visitor 2 visits the website at around 7 p.m. and views 13 subpages. Visitor 3 visits the website at around 8.00 a.m. and 11.00 a.m. and views three subpages one time and seven the other.

The evaluation result would be this:

• 3 unique visitors (visitors 1, 2, and 3)
• 6 visits (8:00 a.m., 10:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m., 1:00 p.m., 5:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m.)
• 35 page impressions (2 x 6 + 13 + 3 + 7 = 35 pages viewed)

Inaccuracies/measurement errors

When determining the unique visitors by means of cookies, there are inaccuracies, which ultimately result in inaccurate measurements. Such inaccuracies may be occasioned by the following circumstances:

• Two people use the same computer and the same browser (= actually two unique visitors, but only one is counted)
• A browser does not accept cookies, or the cookies are deleted as soon as the browser is closed (= the user is counted again as a unique visitor on each visit, since no cookie is found)
• A user uses several computers, terminals and/or browsers (= actually only one unique visitor, but each computer and browser is counted separately as a unique visitor)
• The definition of a unique visitor in the tracking tool is not sufficient (= in the tool, it is for example fix that a visitor is counted as a unique visitor if he looks at a website twice in one day.)

This problem can only be circumvented by having user accounts with each user uniquely identifying themselves. However, since this is not always feasible in practice, a certain measurement inaccuracy is acceptable.

Relevance to search engine optimization

Unique visitors are an important indicator of the success of a website with regard to​​ search engine optimization . Using this statistic, the traffic to a website can be better segmented. New and returning visitors can be differentiated from one another. How to evaluate unique visitors with Google Analytics is shown in this YouTube Video .

• Calculating Unique Visitors in Google Analytics
• Search Engine Optimization

SEO Training & Consultancy

• Training Courses
• SEO Consultant
• Link Building Packages
• Online Reputation Management
• PPC Management
• SEO Training Courses

What Are Unique Visitors and Why Do They Matter?

Do unique visitors really matter and can they make a difference? What does this statistic mean for marketers and why is it so important? 

In today’s article, we’re answering these questions and more and also looking at what value your website unique visitors can have for you from a marketing and money-making perspective. 

Table of Contents

Unique Visits Definition

If you have used Google Analytics before or any other type of software for tracking your views and unique visitors, you probably know that there is a difference between views and unique visits. 

A unique visitor is a person that goes to your website and accesses it for the first time and for a variable period. This statistic can be measured in a number of ways – you can look at your daily visitors, those that you acquire for the whole week and last, but definitely not least, the number of unique visitors you have per month. 

What detail worth noting is that unique visitors are not the only type of metric that can determine the value of your website. It is more of a combination between this figure and your bounce rate, visit duration, as well as the number of total page views you can get in a month. 

Why do unique visits matter?

Unique visitors are a quite important metric for several reasons. Whether you are looking to monetize your website yourself either by using affiliate marketing or some other monetization options, it goes without saying that you need as many unique visitors as possible.

Repeat visitors and customers are obviously also important, but they might not matter as much in the long run. For example, when you have to present a pitch to a company, it’s quite likely that they are going to look at your unique visits number more than they would on their repeating visitors. 

Another area where this metric can prove its value is in establishing the credibility of your brand. Best of all, it is a clear indicator of growth. When you publish content on a regular basis and you’re getting indexed for the keywords you target, it’s quite natural for people to find out using search engines.

This tells other brands that might want to work with you that your website is valuable and that your brand is continuing its growth. Needless to say, these companies have a budget for marketing so they will want to spend their money only on collaborations that provide them with some return on investment. 

Website unique visitor measurement

You can use any tool that’s convenient for you to measure your unique visits, but we have found that Google Analytics is by far the most effective one and the one that also gives you accurate data. 

You might try others, and we aren’t going to say anything against SEMRush or Ahrefs, but their data might not be up to date all of the time. The way the calculation is made is strictly based on the user’s IP. 

There are multiple ways of ‘cheating’ the system into thinking that you’re actually getting more unique visitors than you actually are, but since most people look at other metrics besides your unique visits, you have to pay attention to a number of factors — and we will detail all of them in a section below. 

What other key metrics are related to unique visitors?

While this metric is very important, in fact, we might argue that it is the most important, it needs to be correlated with others. For instance, if you try to use shady techniques of increasing your number of unique visits per month just to get sponsorships, you might not be able to achieve the same with other metrics. 

Here are some that brands that might want to work with you are going to analyze:

Visit duration

Bounce rate, total page views.

• Average visits per week or month
• Interactions per visit

Ideally, someone who visits your website for the first time is going to find information that is useful enough to convince them that they might want to have a look around. 

That means that they will both spend some time on the page or post they’ve come across and read it thoroughly (which, by the way, not too many people do these days), but they might also want to see what other articles you’ve written and published in the past. 

A higher duration of a user’s visit to your website is important not just for the brands you might want to work with in the future, but also for the way you are ranked in the search engines. 

Your bounce rate can be essential when it comes to getting that position in the 1-3s on the first page of a search query. When visitors click on a result they see in Google or Bing, for example, they need to find specifically what they are looking for. 

Otherwise, they are going to click the back button on their browsers, and then select a different result on the search page. This will effectively tell the search engine that what they found on your website wasn’t good enough. 

Sometimes, it takes just one second or less for people to make up their minds on whether they want to read an article and if it is relevant to them or not. The click-through-rate is extremely important for search engines. 

If a user leaves your site almost as quickly as it accesses it, this will influence your rankings in the long run — and in a negative way. 

There is a trick that some websites have been using for a while now and it’s the introduction of a ‘read more’ button after the first paragraph of their content. 

That means that the text people stumble upon needs to be extremely enticing so that they click on the button and at least spend more time on your website — therefore telling the search engines that people are engaging with your content more. 

The number of total views is in fact the number of page loads you have on your website — whether that’s a new visitor or someone coming back. 

It is a pretty good indicator when it comes to assessing how loyal your readership is. Do they come back for more or do they just leave your site after a couple of seconds upon not finding what they are truly looking for?  

Average visits

This is another metric that can be used to tell what loyalty your readership has for your website. 

It’s a somewhat confusing metric, one that not a lot of brands look at as it is a combination between page views and unique visitors, which can make it somewhat irrelevant for marketing campaigns and establishing the value of putting an ad on a website. 

Number of interactions per each visit

When a person finds you using a search query and clicks on a page or post on your website, that is what you would call an ‘interaction 1’. 

But the whole point is that while this unique visitor matters since it all adds up, they should both spend a bit more time on your website (hopefully more than a minute) and after finding the information they need, they should go through your other articles.

The reason we have mentioned this metric in relation to the website unique visitor one is that it can matter in the grand scheme of things. For example, just one visitor that checks out your website twice or three times per week and looks at three pages each will increase both your number of interactions, but also the number of total page views. 

How exactly are unique visitors useful for you?

We have already described how this metric is one that’s essential for collaborating with brands, but there are some other ways your number of unique visitors can prove its worth to you. 

For example and in relation to what we have mentioned before, it is a good way of deciding on a price. Sure, there are a lot of ways you might be able to tell what you can ask for an advertising campaign, an advertorial, or the placement of a banner on your website. 

Moreover, these days you might be able to combine a variety of other marketing methods, so you could, for instance, offer packages where you mention the brand or its products on your Instagram stories or in a post, on your YouTube channel, and also write an article about trying out the services. Many influencers offer such packages these days and depending on their number of followers, they can ask for higher prices. 

The number of unique visitors is also a metric that can be used by you when you purchase guest posts, for example. While it most definitely is not the only one you should look at (the DR, site age, and other factors matter, too), it can definitely influence the way you negotiate with the website owner or journalist you reach out to. 

The lower the number of unique visitors, the lower the price of a backlink from that website. You should also look at the page views, of course, and perhaps ask around and see if that blogger isn’t offering links for lower prices on platforms such as People per Hour or Fiverr , too. 

It’s also worth noting that you can use your unique visitors to compare your data across a period of time. If you’re just starting out, your number of unique visits is probably pretty low, but it might be a good idea to create a report over a period of six or even twelve months and look what progress you have made and perhaps think of ways your growth has been slowed down. 

Finally, unique visitors can be quite useful for A/B testing. Although it might sound a bit complicated, A/B testing can be extremely valuable, especially for people producing digital products or offering digital services or those that create several different landing pages. 

The reports will be a tad challenging to create, though, in that you’ll have to make sure that you have an accurate sample size and also carefully analyze the performance of your A/B testing campaign. 

Competition analysis and unique visitors

It can be frustrating, particularly for someone who’s just starting out their affiliate marketing journey or who’s just built their first website to see that their competitors have a number of unique visitors that can’t be matched no matter the amount of effort you might put into marketing.

But the truth is that huge websites, especially those that have been around for a while and have found a so-called ‘recipe for success’ also use paid ads to increase their unique visitor figures and also acquire more customers or generate more sales using some other method. 

For this reason, you have to look at what your competitors are doing in terms of the marketing channels they are using and how they’re generating unique visits, but you also have to consider the paid ads. 

If you’ve got no budget for paid ads, you need to use your creativity and a number of growth marketing techniques, instead. Replicating their social media marketing campaign might be worth a try, but you also have to look at everything else they are doing, from the number of backlinks they are acquiring, from which sites, what guest posts they’ve published on other websites in the past, if they’ve done any PR and everything else. Even the anchor text of the backlinks matters. 

The information that you acquire during all of this process can help you understand what marketing strategy you should use and how you should tweak it. 

On top of that, you should know that some websites simply must use paid ads — otherwise they really stand no chance against competitors. 

A good example in this case would have to be eCommerce websites, which can make a lot of sales through Facebook ads, for instance, but they have to work with a pretty good social media manager to get the results they need. 

While your unique visitors are undoubtedly important, this is a metric that needs to be associated with others, such as the total page views, interactions, or bounce rate you have on your website.

Also, depending on the exact type of content you have on your website, you might acquire more users seasonally (on holidays or for specific discount periods such as Black Friday or Cyber Monday). 

School schedules, severe weather, promotions, as well as news and events can all influence your unique visitors, so the metric can vary a lot depending on your niche and what topics you tackle on your website. 

Need help with your SEO or digital marketing efforts? We have lots of plans and courses available. Get in touch to find out how we can be of assistance!

Craig Campbell

I am a Glasgow based SEO expert who has been doing SEO for 20 years.

Recent Posts

• Getting Google to Index Your Pages 23rd Apr 2024
• Tiktok Ads with Lazar Zepinic 22nd Apr 2024
• Broken Link Building with Ahrefs 10th Apr 2024
• Youtube Keyword Rank Tracker 4th Apr 2024
• Do Expired Domains still work? 19th Mar 2024

Online Courses

Useful links.

• Privacy Policy
• Terms and Conditions
• Glasgow SEO
• On-Page SEO Checklist
• Black Friday SEO Deals

Recent News

Learning resources.

• Podcast Tips
• Keyword Research Tools
• Buy Guest Posts
• Best Recurring Affiliate Programs
• Technical SEO Guide
• Page Optimizer Pro Review
• Long Tail Pro Review
• Siteground Affiliate Review

Return to top of page

💡 Reveal 101 - Join our Live Product Tour on March 24th, 5 pm GMT / 9 am PST

Book your seat here

CRO Platform

Test your insights. Run experiments. Win. Or learn. And then win.

eCommerce Customer Analytics Platform

Customer Survey Platform

• Managed Services
• How we help

Acquisition matters. But retention matters more. Understand, monitor & nurture the best customers.

• Case Studies
• Ebooks, Tools, Templates
• Digital Marketing Glossary
• Ecommerce Growth Stories
• eCommerce Growth Show
• Help & Technical Documentation

Home » Unique Visitors

CRO Glossary

Unique Visitors

• Definition last updated: 30/01/2024
• Definition first published: 06/01/2023

Table of Contents

Imagine knowing the true size of your audience, their behavior, and the impact of your marketing efforts. How powerful would that make you feel? How much better your campaigns could be? It’s time to embrace the power of tracking unique website visitors. In this entry, we’ll delve into the benefits of this essential metric and how it can revolutionize your online presence. Get ready to unlock a world of opportunities and take your business to new heights.

What Are Unique Visitors?

In marketing, the unique visitors’ metric measures (and counts) the number of distinct individuals visiting a page or multiple pages on your website in a given time interval – regardless of how often they requested those pages.

Note: this metric is different than the number of visits, which shows how many times your pages are visited, regardless of how many visitors land on your website.

Unique visitors are counted only once, regardless of how many times they visit the website during that period.

This means that if a user visits your website and browses through two other additional other pages, leaves your website, and returns to see more pages, he is counted as a single individual user (“unique visitor”).

To understand the concept better, let’s say you have a fashion online retailer called “FashionFab.”

Unique visitors would represent the count of different website visitors who land on the FashionFab site within a selected time (such as a day, a week, or any other defined period.)

Let’s assume FashionFab had 500 unique visitors in a day.

This means that 500 different individuals visited the website on that particular day. These are unique visitors to your website, regardless of whether they visited multiple times or stayed on the site for an extended duration.

If the same person visits the website multiple times within the defined time frame, they are still counted as only one unique visitor.

Unique visitors are a vital metric for online retailers as they provide insights into the size and reach of their audience .

By analyzing unique visitor data over time, fashion online retailers can track trends, evaluate the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, measure the impact of website updates, and understand customer engagement.

How Are Unique Visitors Different From Total Visits or Pageviews?

It’s important to note that unique visitors are different from total visits or page views.

Since the terms are also mistakenly used interchangeably, let’s take a closer look at how pageviews, total visits, and unique visitors differ, emphasizing the different use cases for each one.

Total Visits

This metric measures the overall count of visits to your website, including multiple visits by the same individuals .

Total visits indicate the volume of traffic received by the website, helping retailers understand the overall popularity and demand for their site.

At the same time, monitoring total visits can help retailers single out peak traffic periods. Knowing when the website is going to be the most crowded allows you to optimize your website infrastructure and ensure it can handle incoming traffic without performance issues.

Last but not least, total visits reveal trends and paths in user behavior, delivering insights into navigation patterns and popular pages.

These insights can be further used to improve the website’s user experience and optimize content placement to offer more relevant and enjoyable user experiences.

Pageviews are t he number of times web pages on a website have been viewed , including multiple views by the same visitors.

The metric can help online retailers identify their most popular and frequently accessed pages .

The next step after finding them is using the insights to guide their decisions about content creation. It could either mean highlighting popular products, improving underperforming pages, or using a different approach altogether. Pageviews are also helpful in evaluating the success of ad campaigns . By tracking the number of pageviews on pages where ads are displayed, retailers can assess the effectiveness and engagement of their advertising efforts (whether on Social Media or the Google Ad network.)

Higher page views for specific pages can indicate that users are exploring multiple pages, spending more time on the site, and potentially being more engaged with the brand. In this case, pageviews can become a proxy for user engagement and interest in the website’s content.

Evidently, there’s more to say about each metric, but as a short & sweet rundown, this was the gist of it. To recap:

• unique visitors measure the count of distinct individuals visiting a website
• total visits represent the overall number of visits (including repeat visits)
• pageviews track the number of times web pages are viewed.

Each metric comes with valuable insights into different facets of website performance, user behavior, or audience engagement. We recommend you use them together, each for its own strengths, to make data-driven decisions and optimize your strategies accordingly.

Why Is Measuring Unique Visitors Important?

Measuring unique visitors is critical for eComm & Retail businesses, as this metric offers relevant and profitable insights into how their website is performing. Let’s take a closer look at why tracking unique visitors is a big deal and how it benefits you.

First off, knowing the number of unique visitors gives you an idea of how significant your audience is and how far your brand reaches.

It’s like a popularity assessment for your website. When you track unique visitor data, you can figure out if your marketing campaigns and ads are bringing in new visitors and expanding the customer base.

But it’s not just about the numbers.

It never was.

Unique visitor data is also a goldmine for personalization.

You can dig into this data to understand individual visitors and then tailor your website content, product recommendations, and marketing messages to suit each person’s preferences.

Personalizing the experience makes visitors feel more engaged and increases the likelihoods of them purchasing form you, consequently boosting your conversions .

Speaking of purchases…

Tracking unique visitors helps you see how well your website is converting visitors into customers .

Comparing the number of unique visitors with the number of actual conversions, can help you can figure out if your website is doing a good job of turning visitors into buyers.

This knowledge is key for improving conversion rates and finding ways to boost sales.

And it doesn’t stop there.

Unique visitor data also uncovers crucial insights about your audience.

For example, you can learn about where their visitors are coming from, what devices they use, and when they’re most active. This type of insight into the user behaviour leads to smarter decisions about content, marketing strategies, and website improvements.

It’s all about catering to the audience in the best possible way.

Last but not least, tracking unique visitors allows you to track your progress over time.

By comparing unique visitor data from different periods, you can spot trends, see if certain events or campaigns have ever had an impact, and measure the success of your strategies.

This helps you make informed decisions for the future and keeps them on the path to growth.

So, measuring unique visitors is a big deal.

It gives you insights into your audience size, marketing effectiveness, personalization opportunities, conversion rates, and overall performance. With this knowledge, retailers you can optimize your strategies, create a better shopping experience, and watch the businesses thrive.

How to Track Unique Visitors

So, you’re now sold and want to track unique visitors to your website?

Awesome! Let’s walk you through the “how,” step by step:

Get Yourself an Analytics Tool

First things first, choose a web analytics tool that suits your needs.

You’ve got options such as Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics, but you can use any tool of your preference – here’s a handy guide for the most popular ones out there.

Think of these tools like your trusty sidekicks in tracking unique visitors and providing insightful reports.

Upload in the Tracking Code

Once you’ve signed up for your tool of preference, you’ll receive a tracking code snippet, which you need to add to your website.

Find the </head> tag in your website’s code and slip the tracking code just before it, to make sure everything works smoothly.

Let’s Talk Unique Visitor Tracking

Now, within your analytics tool, it’s time to enable the magical power of unique visitor tracking.

This usually involves enabling cookies, which help identify and track individual visitors.

To maximize your chances of users accepting cookies, think of a clever copy, persuading visitors to click “accept.”

It’s like giving your website a secret handshake with your visitors. Don’t be boring or ordinary about it – use your imagination!

Time to Define

An important step is deciding the time frame you want to track unique visitors.

Do you want daily updates, weekly snapshots, or maybe a custom period?

It’s all connected to your goals and objectives. We recommend you sync unique visitors tracking with any campaign you might be rolling, to ensure you’re getting useful, unbiased insights.

Enter the Analytics Dashboard

Already on Step 5?

Great, you’ve done the setup.

Now, it’s time to dive into your analytics tool’s dashboard. Look out for sections or reports that say “Unique Visitors” or “Audience” to find the insights you need.

Unleash Your Inner Detective (or Data Scientist)

Now it’s time analyze and interpret the unique visitor data in front of you.

You’ll discover cool stuff like the number of unique visitors, where they’re from, what devices they’re using, and how they found your website.

Getting this type of insights is like peeking into your audience’s lives. You get a glimpse of this person’s personality and you can use it to orchestrate better campaigns and experiences.

Spotting Trends and Changes

Compare the unique visitor data over different time periods.

Look for patterns, trends, and any changes in audience size or engagement to get insights about audience behavior.

Keep an eye on these metrics to track the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and site updates.

Power Up Your Decisions

Armed with all this data, it’s time to make some killer decisions.

Adjust your marketing strategies, optimize your website content, give visitors personalized experiences, and boost those conversion rates.

By following these steps, you’ll be a pro at tracking unique visitors, armed with insights that’ll help you understand your audience, level up your website, and grow your business.

Note: Don’t forget to respect privacy regulations and ensure you’re doing things right when it comes to data protection. And always keep your analytics implementation up to date, so you’re tracking unique visitors accurately.

What Are the Limitations of Measuring Unique Visitors?

As good asmeasuring unique visitors could be for business, it’s essential to be aware of some limitations which can impact the accuracy of the data and how you interpret it. So, let’s dive into them:

Perhaps the biggest limitation is that t racking unique visitors relies on cookies .

But here’s the thing, some people delete or block cookies, which messes up the tracking. So, you might end up with inaccurate numbers and data that doesn’t truly reflect your visitor count .

At the same time, a lot of people will switch between devices or browsers when they’re visiting your website.

Each device or browser generates a different ID, which can lead to multiple counts for the same person. It can get messy and make your unique visitor count all wonky and inaccurate.

Now, privacy is a hot topic these days. Some people take measures to protect their privacy, like using browser extensions or opting out of tracking, meaning they won’t be counted as unique visitors, which can impact your data accuracy.

Sharing is caring, right? Well, when it comes to shared devices or networks, things can get tricky. Multiple users accessing a website from the same device or network might be counted as a single unique visitor. It can mess up your numbers and give you an inflated count.

Choosing the right time frame is crucial too . Picking a too short or too long time frame can skew your results, as you want to capture the full picture without including irrelevant or inactive visitors .

Keep in mind that not everyone is trackable. Some visitors disable cookies, use private browsing modes, or have ad-blockers, so they might slip through the tracking cracks and not be counted as unique visitors.

And let’s not forget about cross-device tracking. When people hop from one device to another without a consistent identifier, it’s hard to attribute visits and behavior to a single unique visitor . This can lead to incomplete and fragmented data.

Lastly, data accuracy can be affected by sampling and variations across different analytics tools. Sampling helps process large amounts of data, but it might not provide the whole idea. And different tools may provide different levels of accuracy, so be mindful of that.

So, there you have it. Unique visitor tracking has its limitations. However, understanding these limitations will help you interpret the data wisely and complement it with other metrics and qualitative insights to get a complete picture of your audience and website performance.

As you can see, tracking unique website visitors provides crucial insights into your audience size, engagement, and the effectiveness of marketing efforts. It distinguishes the difference between visits, allowing you to understand your true reach and tailor personalized experiences. Used wisely, this data can inform decisions about strategy optimizing, boosting conversions, and even creating exceptional experiences for your visitors. So, embrace the power of tracking unique visitors and unlock the potential for growth and success.

What Is a Unique Visitor?

A unique visitor refers to an individual user who visits a website within a specific timeframe, regardless of the number of times they access the site. Each unique visitor is counted only once, providing a measure of the distinct individuals interacting with a website.

What Is the Difference Between Visitors and Unique Visitors?

Visitors represent the total number of visits to a website, including multiple visits from the same individual. Unique visitors, on the other hand, count only the individual users who visit the site, disregarding repeat visits within the specified timeframe.

What Is an Example of a Unique Visitor?

Let’s say a person visits an online store multiple times in a week. In this case, they would be counted as multiple visitors but only one unique visitor. Unique visitors focus on the number of distinct individuals rather than the overall number of visits.

Why Are Unique Visitors Important?

Unique visitors are crucial because they provide insights into the actual size of the audience engaging with a website. Measuring unique visitors helps businesses understand the reach and popularity of their site, track marketing effectiveness, personalize user experiences, and improve conversion rates. It enables businesses to make data-driven decisions for growth and success.

Sign up to get our bi-monthly newsletter and other updates.

By clicking the Button, you confirm that you agree with our Terms and Conditions .

Gain customer insights for better-targeted campaigns, higher ROI and more repeat purchases.

30-day free trial, no credit card necessary.

Blog Categories

If you liked this article, spread the word! 🙉

Broaden your eCommerce Knowledge

See more definitions for Digital Marketing & eCommerce terms: 

User Testing

User testing is the process through which the interface and functions of a website, app, product, or service are tested

Form Testing

Definition Form testing refers to the process of assessing your online form’s quality and effectiveness.  Generally, form testing is done

Cost per Thousand Impressions (CPM)

breaks down the CPM formula, explores its advantages compared to other metrics, and reveals the key factors that can impact CPM rates. 

Website Personalization

Definition Generally speaking, website personalization is the process of adjusting the content, layout, and overall user experience of a website

Definition A variation refers to a modified version of a webpage or a specific element within a webpage.  These modifications

Hypothesis (CRO)

Definition The Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) hypothesis is a fundamental statement that serves as the basis for any A/B test or

What topic do you want to explore?

We’ve got everything you need to broaden your eCommerce knowledge. From concepts to hands-on materials on eCommerce optimizations, software and automation, data analysis and reporting. You name it!

We’re a team of people that want to empower marketers around the world to create marketing campaigns that matter to consumers in a smart way. Meet us at the intersection of creativity, integrity, and development, and let us show you how to optimize your marketing.

Our Software

• > Request a Demo
• > Partner Program
• > Affiliate Program
• eCommerce Growth Stories
• Blog Sitemap
• Terms and Conditions
• Privacy & Security
• Cookies Policy
• REVEAL Terms & Conditions

© 2012-2024 Omniconvert. All rights reserved.

Learn / Guides / GA glossary (A-Z)

Back to guides

How to view unique visitors in Google Analytics

Is anybody out there? When you pour your creativity and hard work into your website, service, or marketing campaigns, it’s nice to know if people pay attention. Tracking unique visitors in Google Analytics is one way to confirm real people see and appreciate your efforts.

But knowing how many people visit your website does more than soothe your concerns about whether you’re reaching users—it also helps you communicate your impact to stakeholders and make customer-driven decisions.

Last updated

Reading time.

This guide teaches you what the unique visitors metric in Google Analytics is, how to measure it, and when to use the metric. 

What is the unique visitors metric in Google Analytics?

Unique visitors (or unique users) in Google Analytics is a count of unduplicated individuals who visit your site in a specific time frame.

For example, if Nicole visits your site three times, Tawni visits two times, and Stephanie visits four times, Google Analytics counts that as three unique visitors—even though there were nine separate sessions. 

As a refresher, a session in Google Analytics is a collection of someone’s interaction with your websites, AKA their visit to your site or app.

How to find unique visitors in Google Analytics

If you use Universal Analytics (UA),  ‘users’ always refers to unique visitors.  Any report listing 'users', like the Audience or Acquisition categories, counts unduplicated visitors.

However, this guide focuses on Google Analytics 4 (GA4) since Google transitions to that version in July 2023, and 'unique visitors' isn't the default in GA4. Instead:

'Total users' = unique visitors or unique users ✅

'Users' = active users (NOT unique visitors) ❌

‘Users’ often appear on GA4 reports, but it’s not a direct match for a unique user count. Here are two spots that do list unique visitors in Google Analytics 4. 

Engagement events report

The first place to view unique users in GA4 is through the 'Life cycle' Events report:

Open ‘Reports’

Click on ‘Engagement’ under the ‘Life cycle’ section

Select ‘Events’ from the drop-down menu

Read the ‘Total users’ column

The GA4 events report counts ‘total users,’ which they define as ‘the total number of unique users who log an event.’ Image via Google Analytics . 

Engagement conversions report

The second option to view unique users in GA4 is through the 'Life cycle' Conversions report: 

Select ‘Conversions’ from the drop-down menu

GA4 tracks unique users for events, not page visits. Image via Google Analytics

When to use unique visitors in Google Analytics

Unique visitors shows you how many individual users you reach, regardless of whether they visit your website once or ten times.

Without taking your unique visitors into account, you’d have a skewed perception of how many customers completed an event, like viewing a product page—imagine if Nicole’s three sessions, Tawni’s two sessions, and Stephanie’s four sessions counted as nine users instead of the actual three.

Here are three scenarios where you’d use unique visitors in Google Analytics as a starting point to understand user behavior . 

1. Measure your website’s reach

Imagine a product marketer has custom events in GA4 to measure blog visits and lead magnet landing pages. At the end of the year, they include total users (AKA the number of unique visitors) in a report for stakeholders to compare their performance against goals. 

They also include the ‘event count per user’ to measure how many times unique users view content on average.

❗️ But Google Analytics can’t reveal why users return or decide to stop visiting to help the product marketer decrease bounce rate. 

2. Compare website traffic before and after updates

Suppose a product designer needs to gauge if a navigation redesign makes it easier for users to find a particular page on their app, so they compare monthly total users for that event from before and after the update. 

The unique users count in GA4 reveals whether they met, exceeded, or failed at their engagement goal.

❗️ But Google Analytics doesn’t show how users interact with the redesign. 

3. Determine how far users get down the sales funnel

Let’s say a product manager wants to understand how far most website visitors make it in the ecommerce checkout flow , so they compare total users for various conversion events, like viewing an item, beginning checkout, and adding payment information. 

GA4 will show them a steep decline in users between beginning checkout and finalizing a purchase.

❗️ But Google Analytics won't show them the reason for the decline.

🚨 Keep in mind: total users in GA4 indicate user volume but not behavior. And if you want to make informed decisions about what to keep, change, or get rid of to create a better customer experience, you need to combine qualitative and quantitative data. 

For example, if you saw that more people added item A to their cart than item B, you might assume item B lacks product-market fit . But that quantitative data alone won’t tell you that the buttons on item B’s web page are broken or that you’re promoting item B to the wrong user persona .

Combining website analytics with digital experience insights reveals how users behave and why.

How to pair unique visitors with digital experience insights

Digital experience insights let you observe and learn from users with tools like recordings, heatmaps, surveys, and interviews to build on your Google Analytics discoveries.

Simply adding an exit-intent survey to the item A vs. item B scenario above would reveal that customers want item B in a different color or that crucial details are missing from the product description. 

Let’s revisit the scenarios from the previous section to understand how digital experience insights help teams dig deeper into user behavior patterns . 

Hear about customer preferences directly from them

Think back to the marketing team measuring the reach of their blog and how often unique users came back for more. To make their future content customer-centric, they use a tool like Hotjar to:

Interview customers about what stood out to them, their likes and dislikes, goals, and what they want to learn

Concept test blog image styles to learn which designs drive engagement, so they can carry out optimizations

See how customers move through your website

The product designer from earlier uses unique visitors in GA4 to measure how well a redesign drives traffic to a particular step in the customer journey . 

The next step in their investigation is to watch recordings to see exactly how users scroll, move, u-turn, and rage click on the page. 

When the designer realizes the culprit is a banner that users thought they could click, they rework the page and see engagement increase.

Understand why customers convert (or leave)

Finally, recall the product manager who views total users at each milestone to analyze the sales funnel. 

GA4 revealed a steep decline in users between beginning checkout and finalizing a purchase, so they analyze scroll heatmaps to see how far down each page customers usually scroll. 

To narrow their focus even more, the product manager uses Hotjar Funnels to view sessions of low-engagement pages and uncover a bug that caused the drop-offs, improving the user experience (UX).

Have a plan before you dive into Google Analytics reports

Google Analytics is a powerful web analytics tool, but the different terms and charts become overwhelming if you wander too deep without a plan. 

First, choose a question to answer, like, “How many people interacted with our blog this year?” or “Are there points in the sales funnel where customers drop off?” Then, use the unique visitors (total users) metric in GA4 to gauge user volume for the event. 

Since GA’s quantitative data only gets you so far, you need to use a digital experience insights platform like Hotjar to make sense of your data and learn how your audience interacts with your website or app. 

The more you know about the what, why, when, and how of customer experience, the quicker you’ll delight customers , increase engagement, and boost conversion rates.

Understand what unique visitors do on your website

Unique visitors in GA4 tell you how many people visited your site or app, but you need Hotjar’s tools to understand what they did and why.

Previous chapter

Guide index

Limited time: Try B12 $1/mo for 3 months.

Launch an online presence that makes it simple to attract, win, and serve clients

B12 uses AI and experts to quickly set up your website, scheduling, payments, email marketing, and more.

What is a unique visitor to a website?

As the internet continues to be an integral part of our daily routines, website owners and marketers recognize the importance of tracking website traffic. One of the most commonly used metrics for measuring website traffic is the "unique visitor." But what exactly does this term mean, and why is it important?

In this blog post, we will delve into the definition and significance of unique visitors in web analytics. We will examine the differences between unique visitors and total visits, explore methods of calculating unique visitors, and discuss the importance of accurate, unique visitor data. We will also touch on the role of monthly unique visitors in business growth and provide insights into analyzing visitor behavior through unique visitor data. 

Understanding unique visitors

A unique visitor is a metric used to measure website traffic . It represents an individual visitor to a website within a defined period. Unique visitors are determined by analyzing visitor information such as IP addresses, cookies, and user agents. Each unique visitor is counted only once, regardless of how often they visit the website.

Significance of unique visitors in web analytics

Understanding the number of unique visitors to a website is important for several reasons. Firstly, it helps businesses measure the size of their potential audience and the effectiveness of their marketing efforts. By tracking the number of unique visitors, businesses can gauge the reach and engagement of their website content.

Secondly, unique visitors provide insights into visitor behavior. Businesses can analyze data such as the number of unique visitors, demographics, and browsing behavior to optimize their website and increase conversion rates.

Understanding unique visitors in google analytics

Google Analytics is a powerful tool for analyzing website traffic. It provides businesses with information about the number of unique visitors to their websites, as well as insights into their behavior. Google Analytics tracks unique visitors using cookies to identify returning visitors and analyze their activity on the website. By using Google Analytics, businesses can gain a greater understanding of the effectiveness of their website and make data-driven decisions to optimize their online presence.

Unique visitors vs. total visits

What are the total visits.

Total visits refer to the total number of visits made to a website over a certain period. The same and different users can make these visits. For example, if a user visits the website three times a day, it counts as three visits.

Understanding the difference between unique visitors and total visits

Unique visitors, on the other hand, are a count of how many individual users visit a website during a certain timeframe. It is determined using cookies or IP addresses to track and identify individual visitors. Unique visitors are a more accurate representation of a website's audience size as it excludes repeat visitors from the count.

The difference between total visits and unique visitors is important in web analytics as it helps website owners get a more accurate representation of the size of their audience. Total visits can be skewed by repeat visitors, leading to inaccurate website traffic reports.

Importance of tracking unique visitors

Tracking unique visitors is important as it helps website owners understand their audience size and behavior. It is a metric that can be used to identify how effective marketing campaigns are at driving new visitors to the website. For example, if there is an increase in unique visitors during a marketing campaign, it indicates that the campaign is effective in reaching new audiences.

Additionally, tracking unique visitors can help website owners identify opportunities for improving user experience to retain visitors. If there is a high bounce rate for unique visitors, visitors need help finding what they need on the website, and changes should be made to improve user experience.

How to calculate unique visitors

Calculating unique visitors to a website is an essential part of web analytics. It helps businesses to gain insight into their website traffic and to understand their visitors' behavior. Unique visitors are counted only once, regardless of how often they visit the site. This section will explore methods of calculating unique visitors and why having accurate, unique visitor data is essential.

Methods of calculating unique visitors

There are two methods of calculating unique visitors:

• IP Address-Based: This method counts unique visitors based on their IP addresses. If two visitors have the same IP address, they are counted as one visitor. IP address-based calculations are relatively easy to execute. Still, they can be inaccurate as multiple visitors may use the same IP address (for instance, users accessing the site from a public library or an office).
• Cookie-Based: This method involves setting a cookie on the visitor's device that tracks their visit. If a visitor deletes their cookies or uses a different device, their visit may not be counted as unique. However, cookie-based calculations are more accurate and widely used as they can track specific visitors and their activities on site.

Importance of accurate unique visitors in web analytics

Accurate, unique visitor data is crucial for businesses to measure the effectiveness of their website. It allows them to understand how many people visit their site, how frequently they visit, and where they are coming from. Accurate, unique visitor data helps businesses benchmark their performance, identify trends, and optimize their website traffic. With accurate data, businesses could make informed decisions or measure their success accurately.

Calculating unique visitors is a vital part of web analytics. It provides businesses with accurate data that measure their performance and identifies trends and opportunities for optimization. It's important to have accurate data on unique visitors to understand the website visitors' behavior and make effective decisions to optimize the website. Businesses should choose the method of calculating unique visitors most suitable for their needs and goals.

Monthly unique visitors

Monthly unique visitors refer to the number of individuals visiting a website within a specific month. It is an essential metric to track for any website as it measures its reach in the online market. By analyzing monthly unique visitors, businesses can understand the traffic patterns of their websites, identify growth opportunities, and optimize their websites accordingly.

Calculating monthly unique visitors involves counting each visitor who visits the website within the defined period. It is crucial to remove duplicate or spam visits to ensure accurate data. Monthly unique visitors may fluctuate based on seasonality, marketing campaigns, and the website's content.

Importance of monthly unique visitors for business growth

Monthly unique visitors hold significant importance in achieving business growth as it is a reliable metric for measuring a website's performance. By tracking and analyzing monthly unique visitors, businesses can identify areas for improvement, such as website design and content optimization. Also, it allows businesses to understand their audience better and target them with personalized and relevant offers.

How to increase monthly unique visitors

To increase monthly unique visitors on a website, businesses can focus on various areas such as improving the website's SEO, promoting content on social media platforms, investing in paid advertising, and creating engaging and valuable content that resonates with the target audience. Consistently monitoring and analyzing monthly unique visitors provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of these strategies and help optimize future efforts.

Advanced insights into unique visitors

Analyzing visitor behavior with unique visitor data can provide advanced insights into website traffic and user engagement. Here are some ways to gain a deeper understanding of your unique visitors:

Analyzing visitor behavior with unique visitor data

You can gain insights into how visitors interact with your website by tracking unique visitor data. For example, you can track which pages are most frequently visited by unique visitors, which pages have the highest bounce rates, and which pages are most likely to lead to conversions.

Identifying trends and opportunities for optimizing website traffic

Analyzing unique visitor data over time can help you identify trends and opportunities for optimizing website traffic. For example, you may notice that certain pages have a consistently high number of unique visitors, indicating that those pages are particularly effective at attracting and retaining visitors. Alternatively, you may notice that certain pages have a consistently low number of unique visitors, indicating that those pages need to be optimized to improve user engagement.

Personalizing user experience

By understanding the behavior of unique visitors, you can personalize the user experience to meet their needs and preferences better. For example, you may personalize the content on your website based on a visitor's location, past behavior on your site, or other factors.

Tracking unique visitors across devices

Another benefit of tracking unique visitors is that it allows you to track visitors across different devices and platforms. By tracking unique visitors across devices, you can gain a complete picture of their behavior and preferences and can optimize your website accordingly.

In conclusion, analyzing unique visitor data can provide advanced insights into website traffic and user engagement. By analyzing visitor behavior, identifying trends, personalizing the user experience, and tracking visitors across devices, you can optimize your website for greater success.

Convert more website visitors with B12

B12's website builder is an all-in-one platform for professional services. Attract leads, win business, and serve clients online with a professional site, scheduling, payments, intake, and more.      

B12 can quickly build an entire website using artificial intelligence technology. Answer a few questions about your company, and generative AI will create a website draft with images and copy tailored to your sector. With the B12 Editor , you can start with your website draft and make changes in real time.

In addition, the B12 website also allows you to study your website analytics, providing information that your company can genuinely utilize. You may identify areas for development, understand where your site succeeds, and create new goals by reviewing your stats.

Get started today for free in 60 seconds!

Attract, win, and serve more clients

Receive helpful resources directly to your inbox to help you succeed online.

Related posts

Spend less time on your website and more time growing your business

Let B12 set up your professional online presence with everything you need to attract, win, and serve clients.

• KPI Examples

Unique visitor

As marketers, it's easy to get lost in the infinite sea of   metrics. But one of these   metrics   that gives a great indication of your online marketing strategy performance is the number of   unique users, or as we call it,   unique visitors . It's crucial to measure it in order to better understand the size and reach of your website's audience.

TRACK YOUR UNIQUE VISITOR NUMBER!

Templates using this KPI

Integrations using this KPI

What is a unique visitor?

In marketing,   unique visitors   is a   metric   that counts the   number of people   visiting one of your pages or multiple   web pages   on your website in a given time.

Not to be confused with the   number of visits, which shows the   number of times   your pages have been visited regardless of the number of visitors. Basically, if a   user visits   your website more than once, it counts as a single   unique visitor.

How to calculate Unique visitor

It's an important   metric   for marketers to calculate in order to better understand website user behavior. Usually, a   unique visitor   (or   individual user) will be identified by using a unique   IP address   and any other   identifiers   like cookies, single   user agent, registration ID, etc. 

It's easy to calculate because you can find this   metric   on platforms such as   Google Analytics ,   Ahrefs   or   Alexa .

What is a good Unique visitor number?

Of course, this depends on your industry, but also on how long you've launched your website, your goals & objectives, your audience, etc. There isn't an average, but overall, you would want to see that number growing over time: this is a good indication that you are doing a good job.

What is a bad Unique visitor number?

The same calculation goes to know what a bad   unique visitor   number is. If this number is going down over a certain time period, maybe you need to reevaluate your marketing strategies. 

Unique visitor KPI examples & templates

From GA to digital marketing and eCommerce , these reports give you a good view of all your online   marketing strategy   metrics   and overall online performance. 

Google Analytics template

Google Analytics   is a one-stop-shop where you get an overview of your visitors’ behavior when they’re interacting with your brand online. Get your   total   number of   unique visitors,   page loading   time,   returning visitors   vs   new visitors,   bounce rate , and much more. 

Digital marketing report template

From   social media   to   SEO, this   template   gives you a good overview of your online marketing strategy   metrics   and overall   user experience. Track your   page views and marketing campaigns   in real-time or over a certain   period of time. 

Ecommerce report template

Regroup all of your important   metrics   like your total sales,   conversion rate , traffic sources , and so much more in an easy-to-set-up   eCommerce   report.

Get 10 free dashboards for 15 days

Unique visitor best practices

Here are some of the best practices you should keep in mind to improve your   total   number of   unique visitors. 

Track it alongside other metrics

Your   total   number of   unique visitors   is an important   metric, but it should be combined with other   KPIs   to make sure you understand why there's a sudden surge or drop. For example, check the traffic sources to understand where these visitors are coming from. Knowing more about these   unique visits   will allow you to better adapt your strategy. 

A/B testing

Optimization   comes hand in hand with a/b testing. You might want to create 2 versions of a certain page, change the CTA or the structure, and check which one drives the most   unique visitors. 

Check performance by device and network

Adaptability is considered a very important   SEO   factor and Google (and other search engines) take it seriously. It's important that you make sure your   web pages   are well optimized for   different browsers   and   different devices. 

Want to track all your KPIs in one easy-to-use dashboard?

Unique Visitor Synonyms

Although unique visitor is widely used, there are multiple synonyms that can be used. Here are a few : 

Unique Users (UU), Individual Visitors, Individual Users, Unique individuals, Unique individual users, Number of unique visitor, Number of unique users

KPIs you may also like

Conversion Rate

Customer lifetime value (CLV)

Customer acquisition cost (CAC)

Cost per acquisition (CPA)

Cost per lead (CPL)

Domain authority

Domain rating

Return on marketing investment

Bounce rate

Average time on page

Traffic sources

Keyword Difficulty

Get Started Today!

Made in Canada

DashThis is a brand owned by Moment Zero inc

Copyright © 2011-2024

What Is a Unique Visit? – Explained

Table of Contents

In the world of web analytics, understanding website traffic is crucial to measuring the success and performance of a website. One of the key metrics used to evaluate website traffic is the concept of a unique visit. In this article, we will explain what a unique visit is, its significance in web analytics, and how you can track and increase unique visits to your website.

Understanding the Basics of Website Traffic

Before delving into the concept of unique visits, it’s important to have a clear understanding of website traffic in general. Website traffic refers to the number of visitors or users who access your website over a given period of time. This metric helps you gauge the popularity and reach of your website.

When it comes to website traffic, the numbers can be quite fascinating. Just imagine, every time someone visits your website, it’s like having a new person walk through the doors of your virtual business. Each visitor brings with them the potential for engagement, conversion, and growth.

However, website traffic alone doesn’t provide a complete picture. It’s equally important to analyze the quality of that traffic and understand the behavior and actions of your visitors. This is where unique visits come into play.

The Importance of Tracking Website Traffic

Tracking website traffic is essential for several reasons. Firstly, it allows you to identify trends and patterns in user behavior, helping you make informed decisions about your website design, content, and marketing strategies. By understanding which pages are most popular, how long visitors stay on your site, and what actions they take, you can optimize your website to better meet their needs.

Imagine having a physical store where you can observe and analyze the movements and preferences of your customers. With website traffic tracking, you have a similar opportunity in the digital realm. You can see which “aisles” visitors are browsing, what products or services they show interest in, and even where they “check out” or leave your site. This valuable information empowers you to make data-driven decisions that can drive your business forward.

Additionally, tracking website traffic is crucial for evaluating the effectiveness of your SEO efforts and other marketing campaigns. By monitoring the sources of your traffic, you can determine which channels are bringing in the most visitors and adjust your strategies accordingly. Are your social media posts driving traffic? Are your email campaigns generating clicks? These insights allow you to refine your marketing tactics and allocate resources more efficiently.

Moreover, with the rising importance of data-driven decision making, tracking website traffic provides valuable insights that can help you optimize your website and improve its performance. By understanding how visitors navigate your site, where they encounter obstacles, and what content resonates with them, you can make data-backed improvements that enhance the user experience and increase conversions.

Different Types of Website Traffic

Before diving into the specifics of unique visits, it’s important to understand the different types of website traffic. There are two main categories: direct traffic and referral traffic.

Direct traffic refers to visitors who directly type your website URL into their browser or have it bookmarked. These are the people who are already familiar with your brand and actively seek out your website. They may be loyal customers, returning visitors, or individuals who have heard about your website through word of mouth.

On the other hand, referral traffic comes from external sources such as search engines, social media platforms, and other websites. This type of traffic occurs when someone clicks on a link that leads them to your website. It’s like having a friend recommend your business to someone else, except in the digital world.

Now, let’s explore the fascinating world of unique visits. While both direct and referral traffic contribute to the overall number of visitors, unique visits specifically focus on tracking individual visitors, regardless of the source of traffic. This metric provides insights into the number of distinct individuals accessing your website, allowing you to gauge the size of your audience.

Every person who visits your website leaves a digital footprint, and by tracking these unique visits, you can gain a deeper understanding of your audience. Are you attracting a diverse range of visitors? Are there certain demographics that are more interested in your content? These insights can help you tailor your marketing efforts and create a personalized experience for your visitors.

So, as you continue on your journey of understanding website traffic, keep in mind the importance of tracking and analyzing both the quantity and quality of your visitors. By harnessing the power of data, you can unlock valuable insights that will guide you towards success in the digital landscape.

Defining a Unique Visit

A unique visit, also known as a unique visitor or unique user, refers to an individual user who accesses a website within a specified time frame. Unlike other metrics such as page views or session duration, which can be influenced by multiple visits from the same user, unique visits track the number of distinct individuals visiting a site.

It’s important to note that unique visits are typically counted based on IP addresses or cookies. An IP address is a unique identifier assigned to each device connected to the internet, while cookies are small pieces of code stored on a user’s device and are used to track their browsing activity.

How Unique Visits are Tracked

There are various tools and methods available to track unique visits to your website. One popular tool is Google Analytics, which provides detailed insights into your website traffic, including the number of unique visits. Google Analytics utilizes cookies to track user behavior, allowing you to monitor the number of unique visitors and their actions on your site.

In addition to Google Analytics, other popular tools for tracking unique visits include Adobe Analytics, Piwik, and Kissmetrics. These tools offer comprehensive analytics features, allowing you to gain a deeper understanding of your website’s performance.

Unique Visit vs. Page View: What’s the Difference?

It’s important to differentiate between unique visits and page views. While a unique visit represents a distinct individual accessing your website, a page view refers to the number of times a specific page on your website is loaded or viewed.

For example, if a user visits your website and views three different pages, it would count as one unique visit but three page views. Page views help measure engagement and the popularity of specific pages, while unique visits provide insights into the number of distinct individuals your website attracts.

The Significance of Unique Visits in Web Analytics

Now that we have a clear understanding of what unique visits are and how they’re tracked, let’s explore their significance in web analytics.

How Unique Visits Impact SEO

Unique visits are an important metric for evaluating the effectiveness of your SEO efforts. A high number of unique visits indicates that your website is attracting a larger audience and reaching a wider range of users. This can positively impact your search engine rankings, as search engines consider website popularity and user engagement when determining search result positions.

By monitoring unique visits, you can identify which pages or content are driving the most traffic and optimize them further to increase visibility and attract more users. Additionally, analyzing unique visits can help you identify keywords and search terms that are driving traffic to your site, allowing you to refine your SEO strategy.

Using Unique Visits to Measure Website Performance

Unique visits serve as a key performance indicator (KPI) for your website. By tracking the number of unique visitors over time, you can assess the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns, content updates, and overall website performance.

By analyzing the data from unique visits, you can identify periods of high and low website traffic and correlate them with specific events or changes on your website. This information can help you make data-driven decisions and optimize your website to ensure maximum user engagement and conversions.

Tools for Tracking Unique Visits

Now that you understand the significance of tracking unique visits, let’s explore some of the popular tools available for this purpose.

Google Analytics and Unique Visits

Google Analytics is a powerful and widely used tool for tracking website analytics, including unique visits. By integrating the Google Analytics tracking code into your website, you can gain access to detailed reports on unique visits, page views, visitor demographics, and behavior.

Google Analytics offers a user-friendly interface and a wide range of features to track and analyze your website’s performance. It allows you to set up custom reports, track goals and conversions, and gain insights into user engagement and behavior.

Other Popular Tools for Tracking Unique Visits

In addition to Google Analytics, there are several other tools available for tracking unique visits. Adobe Analytics provides in-depth reporting capabilities, allowing you to measure and optimize your website’s performance. Piwik is a self-hosted analytics platform that offers similar features to Google Analytics, providing insights into unique visits and user behavior.

Kissmetrics is another popular tool that focuses on user behavior analysis, helping you understand the actions and interactions of your website visitors. These tools offer various plans and pricing options, catering to the needs of different businesses and websites.

Tips to Increase Unique Visits

Now that you’ve learned about the importance of unique visits and the tools to track them, let’s explore some tips to increase the number of unique visits to your website.

Optimizing Your Website for More Unique Visits

One effective way to increase unique visits is by optimizing your website for search engines. This includes conducting keyword research, creating high-quality and relevant content, and ensuring your website is technically optimized for search engine crawlers.

Additionally, improving your website’s performance, such as reducing page load times and enhancing user experience, can help attract and retain more visitors. Regularly updating your content, adding fresh and engaging material, and promoting your website through various channels can also contribute to an increase in unique visits.

Leveraging Social Media to Drive Unique Visits

Social media platforms provide an excellent opportunity to reach a wider audience and drive unique visits to your website. Create engaging and shareable content to promote on social media channels, encourage social media sharing, and interact with your audience to build a strong social media presence.

Consider running targeted social media advertising campaigns to reach specific demographics or interest groups. By leveraging the power of social media, you can attract new visitors and increase the number of unique visits to your website.

In conclusion, understanding what a unique visit is and how to track and increase it is crucial for evaluating your website’s performance and attracting a larger audience. By utilizing tools such as Google Analytics, optimizing your website for search engines, and leveraging social media platforms, you can effectively measure and improve your website’s unique visits. Keep exploring different strategies, monitor the results, and adapt your approach to ensure continuous growth and success for your website.

Walter Voronovic shares accurate, honest & pragmatic information on how to use the internet to build profitable digital business assets. 

Best Ad Tracking Software: Affordable, Premium & Best (2023)

27 Free DIY SEO Software Tools: The Ultimate List [2024]

The 9 Best Unlimited Graphic Design Services Compared (2023)

Unique Visitors

Trend analysis.

Monitoring this metric over time provides trend and reach data essential for marketers.

Client Reports

Provide tangible evidence of campaign value and ROI with specific visitor counts.

Audience Segmentation

Crucial for targeted advertising, where campaigns are optimized for specific user groups.

Understanding Reach

Offers an immediate snapshot of the site’s efficacy in drawing in unique users and new audiences.

Why Tracking Unique Visitors Is Crucial

The Unique Visitors metric is a critical indicator of a website's vitality. By focusing on the number of unique visitors, one gains immediate insight into website user behavior, distinguishing between new users and returning visitors. This differentiation enables a nuanced understanding of total users within a specific period.

Tracking Unique Visitors serves a foundational role in digital marketing. It directly informs ad targeting and content personalization strategies. Ignoring this metric compromises the effectiveness of a campaign, limiting its reach and impact.

Stop Wasting Time on Reports. Get Marketing Insights Faster & Drive Results.

How Unique Visitors Interact With Other KPIs

Unique Visitors are an anchor point for understanding website traffic and gauging campaign performance. For instance, it's closely linked with the number of visits, which tallies the total interactions on the site during the reporting period. While Unique Visitors shows how many people visited the site, the number of visits also accounts for how frequently they visit.

A high number of Unique Visits positively influences reach, presenting an opportunity for optimization. For example, if the bounce rate is high among new visitors, this signals a need for immediate adjustment in user experience or targeting.

Impressions, visits to the website, calls, and driving directions are the most important positive metrics to get a broader viewpoint of whether growth is happening in the local community.

How To Measure Unique Visitors in GA-4

Measuring Unique Visitors, or Total Users, in Google Analytics 4 is straightforward. First, navigate to the "Reports" section and then select "Engagement" followed by “Events” from the menu on the left-hand side. This will display a variety of metrics, including Total Users, which is the Google Analytics 4 term for the total number of unique visitors who have logged an event on a website.

What Is a Good Unique Visitors Rate

A good average Unique Visitors Rate usually hovers around 70-80% of sessions. This indicates that most of the website's traffic consists of new individuals engaging with the site, a healthy sign of reach and growth potential.

What Is a Bad Unique Visitors Rate

A Unique Visitor Rate below 50% of sessions is generally considered suboptimal. The website is not attracting enough new audiences, which could limit brand awareness expansion and decrease the potential for conversion.

Report Smarter, Not Harder.

Better, faster & easier client reports are just a few clicks away, why unique visitors matter to clients.

Unique Visitors are a good gauge to understand brand appeal and customer engagement for clients. When the web pages of a site see a healthy number of unique user visits, it signals that the marketing campaigns are effectively reaching new audiences. 

Clients often interpret a rising Unique Visitors metric as a positive indicator that their digital strategy is gaining traction, widening the website's audience, and potentially increasing market share.

Why Unique Visitors Matter to Agencies

In agency offices, Unique Visitors is a dynamic diagnostic tool. Agencies scrutinize the number of unique visitors to a web page and the number of times the users visit during that period to optimize marketing campaigns and strategies. 

A growing Unique Visitors count demonstrates that the agency's campaigns generate clicks and draw in new users—a critical component for proving campaign efficacy. By closely monitoring this KPI, agencies refine their strategies, improve client satisfaction, and ultimately secure long-term partnerships.

How To Analyze & Report on Unique Visitors

Analyzing Unique Visitors lays the groundwork for fine-tuning advertising campaigns. A detailed look into this metric offers valuable insights into audience behavior, engagement levels, and campaign reach.

Analyze Unique Visitors Over Time

Assessing Unique Visitors over a period reveals seasonal trends and user behavior patterns. This timely perspective helps reallocate resources during high-engagement periods to maximize reach and impact.

Dissect Unique Visitors Across Platforms

Segmenting Unique Visitors by channel (e.g., social media, email, PPC) exposes which platforms drive more first-time visits. This cross-channel analysis aids in optimizing spend and targeting strategy for each medium.

Understand Trends & Anomalies

Identifying sudden spikes or drops in Unique Visitors uncovers hidden opportunities or issues. Quick action based on these trends helps to capitalize on unexpected success or mitigate emerging problems.

Put Metrics in Context

Present this metric alongside other significant KPIs like conversion rates, time spent on site, and bounce rates. Doing so adds layers of nuance by showing how many new visitors arrive and what their actions are once they're on the site.

The Power of Visualization

Visual aids such as graphs and trend lines make data more accessible. Visualization tools highlight relationships between Unique Visitors and other metrics, making it easier to understand how changes in one area affect performance in another.

Aligning with Client Goals

Align the Unique Visitors metric with the client's specific business objectives, including brand awareness, lead generation, or sales. Break down how an increase in Unique Visitors correlates with these goals.

Google Analytics 4 Dashboard Example

Related Integrations

How To Improve Unique Visitor KPIs

Improving the number of Unique Visitors isn't just about casting a wider net. It’s also about fine-tuning that net for better results. Here are some actionable tips to help bring more individual users to a website.

Optimize for SEO

Ensure the website ranks well in search engine results. High rankings significantly increase the volume of new visitors and make the site more visible.

Leverage Social Media

Reach out on various social platforms to engage a larger audience. Unique content that offers value attracts new visitors and diversify the site's audience.

Monitor and Adapt

Always keep an eye on metrics to assess what works. If certain strategies fail to attract new visitors, adapt and refine the approach for better results.

Related Blog Posts

Boost Your Client’s Website Performance With On-Page SEO Strategies

Craft the perfect on-page optimization strategy to boost your clients’ SERP rankings.

13 Key Website Performance Metrics To Ensure Client Success

Boost client satisfaction with impressive website performance metrics. Track and display key performance indicators on client dashboards for a seamless user experience.

How Smart Marketing Agencies Master Discrete vs Continuous Data

Discover the strategic role that discrete and continuous data plays in demonstrating value to marketing clients, with handy tips and a comparison chart.

Agency Growth Tips, Delivered to Your Inbox.

What I liked most about this software is the fact that it is an all-in-one website tool. I’m able to easily track keyword rankings, and check Google Analytics and Facebook insights, all in one place. This tool is very helpful, and I highly recommend it.

Click Sprout Media

Tracking data is a vital part of our business, and the accuracy of data is a must. AgencyAnalytics brings all our tracking accounts into one place, streamlining our internal work processes.

DataRush Ltd

An excellent tool to quickly analyze a prospective client’s website or monitor an existing one. We’ve used it for a couple of months and found the reporting tool to be highly accurate, unlike other similar tools.

GetMePlacement.com

The custom reporting features are exactly what we were looking for in a reporting tool, and AgencyAnalytics delivered! It is also very affordable for what you get with it. Don’t hesitate, AgencyAnalytics is well worth it.

KDS FX Design

See More KPI Examples

Conversion rate.

Conversion Rate measures the percentage of leads or visitors to a website or application who take a desired action, such as making a purchase or filling out a form.

Bounce Rate

Bounce Rate is the percentage of visitors who visit a page and leave without doing anything else.

Engagement Rate

Engagement rate is a measure of how many people interact with specific content.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Click-through Rate, commonly abbreviated as CTR, measures the percentage of clicks received on online advertising or a link relative to the number of times it has been viewed.

Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)

Cost per Acquisition (CPA) calculates the average spend on advertising for acquiring one customer.

Average Time on Page

Average Time on Page measures the average time users spend on a specific page of a website.

Get Started for Free

MACH Experts: A discussion on the role of orchestration in composability Sign Up

Page Views vs Unique Visitors: What’s More Important?

It depends on your objectives and audience. let’s start with the basics..

What is a Page View?

A page view is triggered when any page is loaded by any visitor to your site. For example, if you click on a link and the page loads, you have triggered a page view. If you click the link 20 times today, it will count as 20 page views.

What is a Unique Visitor?

A unique visitor is an individual user who has accessed your site. It is determined by the IP address of the computer or device that the user is browsing from, combined with a cookie on the browser they are using. No matter how many visits a visitor makes if he is on the same device and the same browser, only one unique visitor is counted. For example, if you visit this link once today, Google Analytics will count this as one unique visitor. If you come back to this site 20 more times today, you will still count as one unique visitor. If you visit the site from another computer or device (or another browser), you will count as a new unique visitor.

Page Views vs. Unique Visitors – which one matters most?

Pageviews are important for publishers because each page view tallies with an ad impression for each ad on the page. If your ads are sold on a cost-per-thousand views (CPM) basis, this is an important number for you to grow. It's tempting to make sacrifices to the user experience in order to increase page views. For example, an image gallery that loads each new image seamlessly provides a better experience for the user but will cut down on page views. It's important to find a balance so you don't alienate your audience.

The unique visitors metric gives you a sense of the size of your audience. The relative importance of this depends on the purpose of your site or publication. If you are a brand, you may want to maximize the number of people that come to your site, with little regard for how many pages they access, as long as they follow your chosen path through the site. If you are a niche publisher, you may not have a huge audience, but they may show loyalty and engagement by clicking deep into the site and generating page views.

Watch Your Bounce Rate

At the end of the day, the most important factor for growing your page views and unique visitors is content. If your content is not engaging and relevant to your users, they are going to "bounce" and never come back. The "bounce rate" is the percentage of visitors who come to your site and leave within a few seconds. A high bounce rate indicates that visitors didn't like what they saw or didn't find what they were looking for.

Time on Page Indicates Engagement

The amount of time spent on the page indicates whether users are actually reading or watching what you're serving up. The higher the average time on page, the more engaged your audience is on that particular page. As a publisher, increasing this metric provides leverage to increase your ad rates because the ad impression time is longer.

How to Improve Page Views and Unique Visitors With Headless CMS 

Although there are lots of promotional and SEO tricks that can help you improve your KPIs, if you have the wrong tech stack, you're already 10 steps behind your competitors. 

Many CMS out there severely limit your ability to tank on SERP. Why? The primary issue is site speed. Traditional CMS, like WordPress, are notoriously slow. With Search engines increasingly pushing lighthouse scores, your site has to be fast! 

Headless CMS helps with this! Because it's built with Jamstac architecture, it is the fastest alternative on the market! 

7 Effective Ways to Personalize Websites

9 simple ways to make your website more user friendly, coming soon: agility cms new ui.

More modern. More accessible.

About the Author

Joel is CTO at Agility CMS, a SaaS headless content management platform that combines flexible and fast Headless architecture with familiar and easy Authoring tools for editors.

Joel  has over 20 years of experience in customer relationship management, product management, and has embraced cloud technology as a ground-breaking concept over a decade ago.

When it comes to cloud computing, development, and software architecture, Joel is as good as they come. Beyond his knowledge, Joel's diligence is enviable.

View Related Resources

Take the next steps.

We're ready when you are. Get started today, and choose the best learning path for you with Agility CMS.

Get started Request a Demo

Page Views vs. Visits: What's The Difference? We Break It Down

Published: December 29, 2021

When it comes to your website reporting, it’s important to know exactly what you’re tracking and what the metric means.

If you’re using HubSpot’s Marketing Analytics tool , you may have noticed the following metrics in your dashboard: page views, page visits, page sessions. So what’s the difference between these three? Let’s dive in.

Understanding Page Views vs. Visits

A page view occurs when a page on your website is loaded or reloaded whether the user was already on your page or came from an external page. A page visit, on the other hand, only occurs when someone lands on your site from an external page, such as Google or another website.

So technically, every page visit is a page view, but the same is not true the other way around.

It’s important to know this difference, as it can greatly impact your understanding of audience behavior and page performance.

Without this knowledge, you might think that high page views is an indicator of a high-performing website but that’s not always the case. You’ll need to look at more metrics, like page sessions, unique page views, page visits, and other metrics to get a full picture.

Now that we broke that down, we’re going to further explain each metric in detail. Before we get there, it’s important to understand what a session is, as that can help your understanding of other website metrics.

What is a session?

A session is a measurement of visitor engagement that groups together analytics activities taken by a single visitor on your website. It expires after 30 minutes of inactivity.

It works by grouping together the actions taken by visitors as they navigate through your site. This includes the pages they are viewing, the elements they engage with (Think CTAs, forms, or events.)

The time-sensitive element of a session allows you to drill into engagement and traffic on your site.

Here’s an example: A visitor lands on your website’s homepage by clicking on a link from a blog post. They spend some time scrolling down the page, navigating to your product page, and even reading your "About Us" page. Then, they decide to leave the website.

Ten minutes later, the same visitor is still thinking about your product and decides to return directly to your pricing page. All of these actions would count as one session.

Even though the visitor completely left your site, they have not been inactive for more than 30 minutes, so the second visit to your website is recorded as a continuation of their original engagement to your site. If the visitor chose to return after that session has elapsed, their visit would kick off a new session.

How to Understand the Page Views of a Website

A page view is when a page on your site is loaded by a browser.

Don't forget to share this post!

Related articles.

How to Effectively Run an A/B Test On Your Landing Pages

4 Best Practices For Effective Landing Pages in 2015

Personalize Your Simple Follow-up Emails [Product Update]

Why You Need A Blog Subscription Landing Page

Why Landing Page Optimization is so Important

Calls to Action and Landing Pages [Concept of the Week]

3 Secrets of the Top HubSpot Customer Landing Pages

Place Your Landing Page Content Above the Fold [Google Tool]

Better Landing Pages Start With a Marketing Persona

Top 5 Landing Page Mistakes

Outline your company's marketing strategy in one simple, coherent plan.

Marketing software that helps you drive revenue, save time and resources, and measure and optimize your investments — all on one easy-to-use platform

Page Views vs Visits: What’s the Difference?

Pageviews, page visits, clicks, sessions, unique sessions, unique visitors –– these almost synonymous terms can confuse anyone. However, it’s important for business owners to understand the difference between page views vs visits to their website because they do not mean exactly the same thing. And though the difference between the two might seem small, understanding it could help your business improve its marketing efforts.

The problem is that different analytics tools use different terminology to describe the same customer behavior. In general, it’s best to think about page views and visits in this way: a page view occurs anytime someone loads or reloads a page on your site. It doesn’t matter how the person arrived at your site or how long they looked at it. Visits, on the other hand, happen only when a person arrives at your site from an outside source (such as an ad , or a SERP). Therefore, a single visit may contain multiple page views.

Here’s where things can get a bit confusing. First, it’s important to note that page views and clicks are not the same thing –– at least not in Google Analytics. In Google Ads reports, the “clicks” metric indicates the number of times someone clicked on one of your Google Ads. Pageviews, as defined above, track the number of times a page was loaded or reloaded by a visitor. Note, this includes views generated by organic traffic, direct searches , and advertisements. Again, one “click” may spark multiple page views.

Unique Page Views

In addition, Google separates page views even further. “Unique” page views, refer to the number of different pages a given visitor viewed during a session. In practice, this means that if a single visitor refreshed a single page three times during a thirty-minute period, Google Analytics will log three page views and one unique page view.

Visits and Sessions

Many times, a consumer will interact with the same website multiple times after they initially view it. Indeed, it’s not unusual for a consumer to open a page, close that page out, and search for that same website again a few minutes later. Typically a CMS or CRM will count this as two page visits –– since the visitor arrived at the site twice –– even though the visits occurred within the same session. A session is a period of thirty minutes that begins after a visitor first enters a site. During that session, visitors may generate multiple page views, and even multiple visits (as in the scenario described above).

Once thirty minutes has expired the session ends. If the same person goes back to your site an hour after initial contact, then Analytics will log it as a new session. (Analytics also tracks visitors as “users.” So if the same person initiates multiple sessions, the sessions are counted as unique, but not the user.)

What Does it All Mean?

The key to understanding marketing metrics is to appreciate their context. For instance, a blog post that inspires a huge number of page views, but a relatively low number of visitors, may not be as influential as it first appears. Pageviews are a valuable piece of raw data, but without a deeper understanding of your site and your customers’ behavioral patterns , they only represent a portion of your website’s performance.

Contact the Pros

Share This Story, Choose Your Platform!

About the author: chans weber.

Related Posts

How to Write Website Copy in 7 Easy Steps

What Does the Future of Blogging Hold?

5 Bad SEO Practices to Avoid in 2019

What Pages Should a Website Have?

Unique visitors

CREATED FOR:

The ‘Unique visitors’ metric shows the number of visitor IDs for the dimension item. It is one of the most common metrics used when determining traffic, as it gives a high-level overview of the popularity of a dimension item. For example, a visitor can come to your site every day for a month, but they still count as a single unique visitor.

If you use Cross-device analytics , this metric is replaced with the Unique devices metric.

Daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly unique visitors

Analysis Workspace treats unique visitors based on the granularity of the report. For example, if you use the Day dimension, you’ll see daily unique visitors for each dimension item. However, for the report total, it is deduplicated unique visitors for the freeform table’s date range.

How this metric is calculated

This metric counts the number of unique visitor ID’s for a given dimension item. It uses multiple advanced mechanisms to identify unique visitors, since there are several ways to identify them. The following table lists the ways a visitor is identified, along with its priority. Some hits can have multiple visitor identification methods; in these cases the higher priority method is used.

Behavior that affects unique visitor count

Unique visitor identifiers are typically stored in a browser cookie. A new unique visitor is counted if they perform any of the following:

• Clears their cache at any time
• Opens a different browser on the same computer. One unique visitor is counted per browser.
• The same person browsing your site on different devices. A separate unique visitor is counted per device. You can use Cross-device analytics to combine visitors together using the People metric.
• Opens a private browsing session (such as Chrome’s Incognito tab).

A new unique visitor is not counted, as long as the cookie identifier is preserved:

• Closes their browser for an extended period
• Upgrades their browser to the latest version