Forum Moderators: martinibuster
sometimes i get emails from agencies who want to know my website stats to decide if they maybe want to do business with me.
so the standard quantities they want to know are page impressions and visits.
since we are webmasters, we should already know that page impressions mean nearly nothing about the performance of a web site - or am i wrong?
it simply means, how much users klick on the pages.
first of all it's manipulable, because if you have for example a page with 3 inline frames, a site refresh counts 4 impressions.
second, it's dependent on site design, navigation and topic. for example, a page with a foto gallery generates much more clicks than an informational site.
third, if you design a proper site, users don't need to click much to get the information they want. therefore better user experience but less impressions.
i assume this is all well known stuff, but what i want to say is: why are business partners still so focused on page impressions as benchmark?
answer: most are dumb and have no clue about these issues.
i have no problem with showing my stats to them, so i tell them my unique visitors (most important) and my visits.
i know that the imaginary importance of page impressions is still in the heads of many decision makers, but what can be done against this?
i don't want to start a difficult in-depth discussion about this issue everytime.
aren't there any guidelines for online marketing or progressive articles which confirm the nonsense of page impressions as quantities of success i could refer to? still no consensus in this field?
Of course the numbers need to be interpreted in the context of the type of site, its topic and the way it is constructed, but that does not make them valueless.
