What’s a “hit” ?

We were perusing an internet woodworking forum and noticed a thread talking about CustomMade.com and whether or not it was a good value. A lot of the discussion in that thread revolved around the topic of how many “hits” the site generated for its artisan members. While we often discuss average “pageviews” on the older website in our marketing materials, we noticed some people using the terms “hit” and “pageview” interchangeably when talking about the value proposition of subscribing to our website.

Here are our definitions of these terms;

A “pageview” is the same as an “impression” – it’s anytime a user views a picture of an artisan’s work or their profile page. On the old website (replaced by the current Version 2.0), the average subscriber received between 4,000 and 6,000 pageviews a month. About 60,000 pageviews per year.

A “hit” is a click-through from our website to the Artisan’s personal website. The new site has been up for a little more than 30 days – in that time, we have subscribers getting 20 click-throughs, and we have folks who have gotten over 300 click-throughs. Interestingly, the folks with more content seem to be getting less click-throughs and far more pageviews and exposure. We think that makes perfect sense – consumers seem to prefer the profiles they can browse without going offsite to clicking off site to view more work examples. It’s easier, after all.

The most common misconception seems to be that a “click-through” or a “hit” is much better than a pageview… which we don’t think this is necessarily true. Consumers coming to our website do so in order to see everything in one place – they don’t want to click-through to individual artisan’s web pages primarily because it’s a hassle. They enjoy the ability to browse and contact artisan’s without having to jump around. The majority of the contacts/leads that occur through our website are now actually happening through the “Contact” button in the individual Artisan’s profile… meaning that people are viewing the work example and choosing to contact the artisan without ever having gone to the Artisan’s personal web page.

We think the key is getting exposure to your content (examples of your work) in as many relevant places as possible – so the consumer can interact with the Artisan in a streamlined way that meets with their browsing preference.