Unique User – how many individuals have interacted with your website?
The Unique User is a value that represents the frequency of access to a website over a defined period, for example, with AGOF = Arbeitsgemeinschaft Online-Forschung. AGOF is the leading online marketer, making the internet a qualified and secure advertising medium by determining binding reach standards and usage data. When counting Unique Users, it is not the sum of all accesses that is counted, but rather the number of different individuals, regardless of how many times they have accessed the page.
Example Unique User:
You visit a website today as a user and click through five different subpages. After a few days, you return to the site and click on three more subpages. The result is: 1 Unique User, 2 Visits, 8 Page Impressions (5 page views on the first visit and 3 on the second).
Distinction between the terms Unique User, Visits, and Page Impression, as they are often confused:
- Unique User: Number of visitors to a website (multiple visits by the same person are not counted)
- Visit: A visit is a unit of measurement for the frequency of access to a website. Within a defined period (usually 30 minutes), each IP address is counted only once, regardless of the number of visits. This measures a continuous usage activity on the website.
- Page Impression:
Number of visual contacts with a website. A high number indicates the attractiveness of a page. A Page Impression is not necessarily identical to the number of visitors. For example, if a visitor clicks through 5 subpages, there are 5 Page Impressions and one visitor (Unique User).
To determine the number of Unique Users, cookies are used. So, if a user visits a website multiple times, they will be recognized as a “repeat visitor” and counted only once as a Unique User during subsequent visits.
However, the number of Unique Users is not exact and should be seen only as an approximate value. Why is this so?
- If the tracking is not set up correctly, it can happen that a single user is counted again as a Unique User if they visit the same page again the next day.
- Access to the PC is through several family members – in this case, only one Unique User is counted.
- In addition to the PC, the user also uses a smartphone, tablet, and both work and personal computers. In this case, the user is counted multiple times, even though it is always the same person.
- The browser is set so that cookies are not accepted or are deleted immediately after each session. In this case, the user will be counted as a Unique User each time the website is opened.
Many Unique Users = high reach
By knowing the number of Unique Users, every website operator can determine how high their reach is and whether website optimization in the context of search engine optimization is advisable. (Search engine optimization includes all measures that aim to increase a website’s ranking in the unpaid search results of search engines.)
A high number of Unique Users means: high traffic on your website. To gain relevance in search engine results, a lot of traffic is important.
Your contact person for improving traffic
How to generate a lot of traffic on your website beyond search engine optimization, you should discuss directly with our online specialist Tanja Hensler (hensler@trebbau.com, Tel.: 0221/37646 – 330). She is familiar with all the terms and metrics of online marketing and will create your online media plan. Based on your briefing instructions, Sabine Schätzer selects the appropriate tools for your campaign and helps you increase the traffic on your website and thus the number of Unique Users.