• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • Good Books
  • Tools
  • Blog
  • Darren
  • Contact
  • Hire Me
Small Biz Geek

Small Biz Geek

Small Business Design, Marketing & Technology Journal

Solving small business design, marketing & tech problems

  • The Internet
  • Marketing
  • Graphic Design
  • Web Dev
  • Web Design
  • Social Media
  • Privacy & Security
  • Tech
  • Misc

20 Years On and Website Hit Counters are Still a Waste of Pixels 🧮

Published: February 1, 2020; Updated: August 2, 2023 Filed Under: Design, Web Development

Website hit counters clutter up the computer screen and run the risk of looking like an unsophisticated attempt to impress visitors. If traffic numbers matter, use analytics software.

website hit counters

We’ve just entered the second decade of the 21st-century where, sadly, all the classic human frailties and foibles show no sign of going away.

Greed, war, lying, microwave meals, watching TV’s Love Island, pretending to need to use the toilet when your spouse asks you to dry the dishes… well, it’s all there.

But there’s another societal ill persisting well into what the Victorians assumed would by now be the age of enlightenment.

The Website Hit Counter: Let It Die

Like a smug grin stuck to your monitor, this still-used 1990s waste of space needs to be exterminated along with guestbooks and chatrooms and dialup modems.

The cartoon clip art design has mostly disappeared, but the idea of publicly bragging about website hits is still seen as tacky among serious businesses.

Frankly, no one cares that 50,000 people have visited your corner of the web. And that’s assuming you or your webmaster haven’t spent hours refreshing the page to inflate the figures.

Bravenet hit counter

Oooh, impressive!

Presenting such numbers – real or fake – isn’t going to win you any respect. It just comes across as an ill-deserved badge of honour in the absence of any genuine signals of trustworthiness.

However, there’s an exception to the rule.

When To Use a Counter

Counters work in an ironic context, such as for classic online writers like Maddox (The Best Page in the Universe), who, as I write this, has received 224,141,093 visitors.

224, 141, 093 think I'm right about everything

That is genuinely impressive but not surprising considering he was one of the first to launch a popular website back in the early 2000s. 

You’ll also notice his counter has been incorporated into faux-grandiose sentences to provoke amusement. This kind of thing works well because it’s part of his shtick.

201,984 people read this article while they were stuck in a self-checkout line.

It gives me an idea. I run a highly-trafficked website containing local fast-food menus available for download.

Perhaps a hit counter could be configured to measure visits rather than views and woven into a prominent sentence that says something like “90,000 people are too lazy/stupid to cook.”

The website would, therefore, be able to humblebrag about the high traffic numbers while appealing to the self-deprecating self-image of the average burger-gobbling Brit.

But a counter on a website advertising professional paid services? No.

Creating a Sense of Community

Perhaps it’s harsh to assume that showing off numbers of hits is motivated by vanity considering that a certain amount of chest-beating is to be expected in any industry.

Yes, we do live in a shallow world. First impressions do count. Online marketing is just a computerised egg and spoon race with cash prizes.

But if there’s a real desire to create a sense of community, tools including but not limited to comment systems and social likes/shares can be implemented to much greater effect.

It may have been the case that before decent search engines and before Twitter, Facebook et al, there existed no way to gauge the popularity of a website, but today, we live in a world of feedback, reviews and rankings.

Social media took up the mantle for popularity metrics many years ago and a brand’s popularity will be evident based on other things other than a simple counter.

Measuring Traffic and Engagement

When an individual or organisation invests time and effort in a website, they want to know whether the party is packed and pumping or as dead as a Monday night dive bar. 

That’s where the free-to-use Google Analytics comes into its own.

You might have gotten a visitor, but did they actually mean to visit your page? Maybe they’re there by mistake. Did they enjoy looking at your site, or was it a waste of their time?

With a decent structure, fewer distractions and real value, visitors will stick around. They might even like, comment and share. Woo!

It’s Easy to Build a ShitSite

I’ve noticed that cheap instant online website builders are often the culprit for terrible design/development choices if only because it’s tempting to include anything and everything on offer from the administration panel.

A plethora of easy-to-add gimmicks means many websites are doomed to resemble a casino slot machine rather than a respectable information resource.

Wix still carries drag ‘n’ drop hit counters, ready to be published within seconds, as does GoDaddy’s instant website builder and probably many others.

Because of this, hit counters are almost always a feature of a shit website, and what I will, from now on, refer to as a shitsite. All one word.

Build a shit site

Want to stand out? Build your very own shitsite today, absolutely free!

Summary: Minimal Design Elements = Better Experience

Don’t fall into the trap of supplementing a basic lack of value on the site with “big numbers”. We’ve been conditioned to believe high figures/ratings for the sake of it are impressive, but counters generally don’t help. 

Getting rid of excess baggage/eyesores from a website is akin to pruning an apple tree so that it stops wasting energy on foliage and starts bearing fruit.

Another thing; there’s the issue of counters containing dodgy third-party code, which can expose visitor’s computers to viruses, malware and adware. 

Finally, if your website doesn’t get much traffic and you have a counter on which the number shown is low, remove it! It’s definitely surplus to requirements in those circumstances.

Imagine this… how different would your website design be if you were charged by the pixel? 

You Might Also Be Interested In...

  • Badly Behaved Images? Leverage the Power of Vector Graphics to Eliminate Unruly Design ⚡
  • Cookies, Privacy and Permission: Is Your Website Legal? 👨‍⚖️
  • WordPress Duplicator Plugin ZipArchive Failure… My Solution 🥲

Filed Under: Design, Web Development Tagged With: bravenet, godaddy, Google, google analytics, hit counters, shitsite, site builders, Site speed, Social, traffic, Twitter, web counters, Websites, wix, yola

About Small Biz Geek

I'm Darren, helping small businesses with design, marketing & tech.

Small Business Website Design

Do you need help with something web related?

Hire Me

Reader Interactions

Subscribe to Blog Feed by Email

Your email address won't be shared. You'll never be spammed. Check your inbox to confirm opt-in.

Comments

  1. Jordan Z says

    April 25, 2022 at 7:38 am

    I haven’t seen a hit counter in over a decade. Why do you hate nostalgia? Who hurt you?

    Reply
    • Small Biz Geek says

      May 2, 2022 at 12:05 pm

      I’ve seen too many to mention!

      Reply

Add Your Thoughts Cancel reply

Your email address is safe and will NOT be shared with anyone else.

Hateful, spammy or abusive comments will not be tolerated.

For more information please see the comment policy.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

Search Website

Latest Blogs

  • Is Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) the Answer to the Future of Search? 🎨
  • How Hiding Your Phone Number and Using a Booking System Repels Time Wasters and Helps “Positioning” 🗓️
  • “Fucking Good Content” – Dan Kelsall (Book Review) 📘
  • Scam Poetry: The Time I Was Recruited to the Cult of Amway ⚠️
  • A Story of Seductive Social Media Success and Neglected Email Strategy 🏚️
  • The Classic Social Media Trend Destined to Ruin Your Business 😭
  • Looking for Online Work? Don’t Fall for this Fake Hays Recruitment WhatsApp Scam ⚠️
  • Cream of the Crap: How Fake Reviews, Bad Businesses and Dangerous Products Rise to the Top 💣
  • Exposed: The Hong Kong Investment “Fraud Recovery” Scammer Deceiving Victims 🤑
  • Computer Says No: Does Your Website Work for People with Disabilities? ♿
  • Chinese Tinder Profiles Are Using Photos of Pretty Girls to Scam “Investors” 💋
  • Small Biz Owners “Trapped” Using Email Addresses Belonging to Internet Service Providers 🪤
  • In the Pandemic, QR Codes are Finally Proving Worthy in the West 😷
  • Small Businesses Finally Start Marketing… and All It Took Was a Global Pandemic 🏁

Footer

Primary Navigation

Home
About Darren
Good Books
My Tools
Blog Posts
Hire Me
Contact Me

Derby & Nottingham Area

The Internet
Marketing
Graphic Design
Website Development
Website Design
Social Media
Technology
Miscellaneous
Privacy & Security

Let’s Connect

Twitter
YouTube
LinkedIn
RSS

Small Business Blog · Privacy Policy · Commenting Policy · Website Disclaimer · ICO number: ZA305900


Written and designed by Ilkeston Web Design

  • Home
  • Good Books
  • Tools
  • Blog
  • Darren
  • Contact
  • Hire Me