How to Explain Page View, Visitors & Visits (& Why Visits Is More Important)

In years of working with web analytics, I've had to try and explain the difference between page views, visitors and visits, and why people looking at basic stats should focus on visits. I can usually get the point across with the simple explanation and be pretty sure that people get it, but I once told a more involved (and more fun) story, and it seems that this story was the difference between a still-slightly-confused "Oh, okay" and what I got after this story, which was "Ohhh! Okay, now I understand it." With smiles.

The story:

Tom just moved into a new 4-room apartment and is exhausted. He just wants to spend the day sitting on the couch and watching the full season three of Mad Men that he has squirreled away on his DVR.

About fifteen minutes into the show, Tom's doorbell rings, so he has to stop the DVR and get up off the couch. It's his friend Kate, stopping by to pick up a DVD she's loaned Tom, so she only see's the front room as Tom picks up the DVD and hands it to her. She leaves. One visitor paying a visit with one room viewed.

An hour later, the doorbell rings again and Tom pulls himself up again (getting kind of annoyed now) and gets the door. It's his friend Cortney who's stopped by to see the apartment. Tom shows her the full apartment and she leaves. One visitor paying a visit with four rooms viewed.

A little while later, Greg stops by, but he's only interested in the new TV that Tom got, so he never leaves the living room. One visitor paying a visit with one room viewed.

Just as Tom wonders if he's going to get interrupted again, Kate comes by again and says, "I forgot to get a full tour of your new place!" He shows her around and she leaves. One returning visitor paying a visit with four rooms viewed.

So that's four visits paid by three different people, with ten views of the rooms. But why should Tom care more about how many visits were paid than the people who came by? Because it means he had to get up off the damn couch four times! They're all his friends, and once he's off the couch, the number of rooms he shows off doesn't make a difference, so really what matters to him at the end of the day is that his perfect, Mad Men-filled day was interrupted four times.

The apartment is a website, room views are page views, visitors are visitors, and visits paid are visits. Which is obvious, but this not only explains in a more real-world way the difference between the three, but also makes it clear why it's the initial visit that's the most basic measure of action: because we hate having to get up to do something when all we're trying to do is loaf.