Do Unique Hits Matter?
There is this misconception amongs traffic exchange users that high unique ratios are good. I can understand the thought, higher % sounds good right? Well today I hope to clear up the confusion.
First off, what is a unique ratio? Well its the ratio of unique hits to total hits. Unique hits are people who’ve never seen your page before. In advertising this usually is a 24 hour period.
So if you see a 100% ratio, that means every hit was a new person who hasn’t seen your site (or at least not in 24 hours). Many see this as a good thing, because you are getting new people to see your ad.
Say it ain’t so! The problem with this is that advertising, especially traffic exchanges, requires repetive views of your ad before you get a signup. It’s been proven, and I’ll prove it again:
Out of my most recent 79 signups, I tracked it took between 1 and 113 views of the ad to result in a conversion. It averaged to 14.83 pages viewed.
If you saw that your tracker got a 1% unique ratio, you’d be pretty upset right? Well in one of the cases the person saw the ad 113 times before subscribing! Now the actual reason why I couldn’t tell you, maybe some day I’ll match the tracking to the subscriber and interview them..
But the point is, if I had only been getting unique traffic, I wouldn’t have gotten that signup. And I wouldn’t have gotten the majority of my signups, as the average was close to 15 views.
Now one could argue that since the unique hits are based on 24 hour periods, I could still get those people over a 15 day period. But I disagree! Over a 15 day period my ad isn’t shown enough where it’ll get recognized. If you view 1000 unique pages a day, for 15 days, you aren’t likely to remember them as much as seeing the same page on one day 15 times.
So what’s one to do? Well you need a bit of both. Obviously, you want new people seeing your site, but you also want to repeat hits to get branding going. That’s why I only track total hits and results, because you can focus more time on uniques than results, and waste more time and energy.
Now that’s a very interesting post Tim. 113 views? What better proof that to succeed you just need to keep at it. You could easily correlate this post to the idea that newcomers can’t give up after sending 100 visitors to a page and not getting any signups. Keep working it and eventually results will come.
Travis Millwards lastest blog post..Could this be the easiest way to build a list?
Very good post and something I have ranted about. You need to be seen consistnetly many times to create branding.
The ultimate measure though is your cost per signup from each source not uniques.
And yes even if you surf for your traffic there is a cost.
Mike Paetzolds lastest blog post..Is your own business really more risky than working for someone else?
Interesting stats, Tim… isn’t ad tracking fun? :~)
I believe there does need to be a happy medium. There are exchanges out there that produce thousands of page views a day, and have less than a 10% unique ratio… that’s too much to one extreme, and I more than likely won’t advertise there…
I try to keep my ads in places that produce somewhere between 60 and 75 % unique ratio…
DA
I guess that this is why I haven’t been doing traffic exchanges for a while. I never figured out how to track your ads this way, how did find out that one guy saw your ad 113 before he signed up?
Anyway. That’s very interesting, and I agree with you that you need a bit of both. I have always focused on unique hits, but I understand now that that’s not what it’s all about :-)
It requires lots of tracking and record keeping, and its something I hope to make available to the public in the future. Time will tell. (checks TODO list LOL)
Great post Tim. I really love your approach to testing and tracking and it always throws up some interesting (and often unexpected) results. 113 views for 1 signup is a lot, but it just goes to show the branding effect of persistent advertising.
While uniques are interesting, I think total hits are what you should track in terms of conversion rates as you pay for every hit.
I’m advertising my own business anyway so if an ad doesn’t convert to a click or signup, it still creates my brand.
I’d love to see more posts like this, backed up with solid data.
Those statistics really show how important it is to keep your campaigns going. You never know if one more page view will be the one needed to get that signup.
Michelles lastest blog post..My Favorite Manual Traffic Exchanges
I have seen mentioned many times on the Internet that it takes an average of 7 exposures to something before people take action.
If that is true (I think it is at least 7) then getting totally unique hits would be a killer for a business.
I think it is a balance of both. You need new people each day starting the track of exposures and you need to be advertising enough that each day people are not only somewhere between 7 exposures (using 7 as a benchmark) but are reaching 7 and taking action.
As so many have said here and elsewhere it all boils down to taking persistent and consistent action.
Thanks
Bo Tipton
The Ornery Marketer
Bo Tiptons lastest blog post..The Number One Reason That People Fail On The Internet
Thanks Tim for pointing that out because I myself may pass a sight 8 or 10 times before joining a program and I totally agree with you
Thanks Dewayne Goodwin
AKA ybear211
Thanks for the very interesting observation on unique hits.
The experts say the 7 times rule works for email list (a captured audience) but as you pointed out TE page views require a much higher exposure rate.
The question, however, is how do you manage the exposure level in traffic exchanges on any one site?
So much depends on membership size, URLs in circulation and active member participation.
Thanks for sharing.
Very good and useful info!
Thanks Tim!
Your diligence at tracking and record keeping debunks promotional hype regarding unique hits.
What is most important is whether my page converts at all, and if so can it be tweaked to convert better.
Experts have long said it takes an average of 7 views, your record keeping doubling that to 14 is interesting. Full agreement with the posts saying “stick with it.”
Another factor with TE’s (I’m a confessed surfaholic) is that most of us are surfing as fast as we can to gain advertising credits for ourself. Seven exposures might work on media actually read which is not always the case for TE’s. Thus agreement with all who preach that short and compelling splash and squeeze pages are the only way to go on TE’s.
Max (and Tersa) Ziegler
Hey Tim, Now I know what I was doing wrong, Thanks for the info.
Proof once again that patience and perseverance pay off , I have a Hub on Page 2 of Yahoo and I jumped my Alexa rank up to 1,420,582 from over 4ml all in one week. It can only get better now that I picked up TE Toolbox.
Have a Wonderful Day, Timothy Millar
Timothy Millars lastest blog post..Make Money Online with Hubpages
Hi Tim,
The main reason I look at unique hits is to make sure that its not the same ppl looking at your site all the time in those TE’s where there are ppl just churning through the pages to generate credits. Having a balance between unique hits and total hits ensures your pages(s) are being seen often enough and by enough ppl. The traffic exchanges that work well for me have a 50-70% ratio of unique to total hits. Does anyone else look at this?
Cheers
Martin Webster
http://www.affiliateprosperity.net
Nice perspective to put on unique traffic. Never realized it took that many views to get a conversion on a traffic exchange. I am liking these pay for the first page for a week ads more and more. Seems they would convert a lot better than some surfer just trying to blast through as many sites as possible. Besides if you have that first page… even those that only surf say 20 pages per day still get to see your ad, where they might not have otherwise.
Dennis Grubbss lastest blog post..Newbie Training Giveaway Event
I am a complete novice at this and have to thank you for this piece of advice. Subscribing to your blog might just prove to be a wise move.
Good points tim, this is why i use a 3rd party tracker that tracks by i.p. address.
even though some i.p.’s change most don’t so you can see how many time each unique ip saw your ads and not count them as unique multiple times because 24 hours have passed.
You are saying that 1 unique view equals 1 view of your site only, however that is not so and is an oversimplfication of the type of sites that CAN and DO control views.
With uncontrolled surfing you must surely see its disadvantages and the advantage of restricting the number of times per day, a single member, can view any one single submitted URL.
Can you also imagine the huge extra cost to the advertiser of un-restricted views to your site by the same person each day of unrestricted views.
Traffic exchanges that do not restrict the number of times a single member can view any one of your submitted and rotating URLs
are merely demonstrating their lack of control, these types of traffic exchange are doing their members a disservice.
a) TEs should restrict the views of any submitted URL with credits on them to 1 per day.
b) Alow members to submit unlimited URLs, so anyone wanting to advertise and get mroe views to their site can get the extra views that they want to their site.
As free members do most of the surfing and do not earn 1 credit per view, they decrease the amount of total credits in rotation.
Over time TEs would simply run out of site with credits for members to view.
I have to say that I think that the real incentive TE Webmasters have to allow unlimited and unrestricted views to your site, is for the 2/3rds of a credit that is being used up each rotation.
This leaves members with the inability to maintain any credits on their sites unless they upgrade and surf or purchase more credits.
So what is a unique view then, if it’s not one view of the site?
Tim, you are an amazing bank of knowledge and your willingness to share it with the internet marketing world speaks volumes about the person that you are.
I surf everyday, and strive to give each page at least a good look because I hope that is what other surfers are doing when they see my pages. I have noticed with myself, that it does take more than 2 or 3 views of the same site for me to actually stop and find out what it is all about. I think that if you limit unique views, the number should be more than just one per viewer.
Thank you for a very informative post.
Tim,
I am just very pleased to have access to the information you give freely to help others on the net.
Les
Is it google adsense agree with this traffic include startxchange
Google clearly says not to use Adsense inside traffic exchanges. If you do it, there is a good chance you’ll lose your Adsense account.
I think you need unique traffic as well as traffic from traffic exchanges. Yes, you should track where the traffice is coming from so you can improve in what you are doing. I agree that you need to just keep at it and work hard. Hard work and consistency pays off.
Deborah Johnson
http://www.viralmoneyexplosion.com
Deborahs lastest blog post..Viral URL
Conclusion: the middle way it’s the best way!
To be in balance and avoiding any extreme, is the key to our success!
Great post, Tim.
Thank you,
Erzsebet Kovacs