If most people view 4 pages and it is not unusual for others to view 10 (maximum viewed is 19 but that was probably my Mom) does this suggest a good site? I myself find most sites rubbish and stay for less than a second. Please discuss this topic in relation to good sites you own or are familiar with.
"(maximum viewed is 19 but that was probably my Mom)" Ha, that made me laugh. It atleast tells you the people visiting your website have some degree of interest in it.
If you measure how long they stay per page... then you can see what they think about the quality of your site (according to themselves of course). You can have 1 visitor stay on 1 page only, but it's much different if they stay for a split second versus 30 minutes.
My friend owns an 'inspirational message' website #1 and #2 on Google and gets a lot of visitors. He gets many visitors and lots more pageviews but the nature of this site (mainly short poems or stories) take about 60-120 secs to read.
page views, unique visit and, how long they stay per page. you can combine those things together and you will understand your visitor beter. if you knew that you got lots of traffic but low page views, it might be something wrong wih your links or content. if you got low traffic but longer stay per page, you know what the visitor want from your site. if you got short stay views but lots of traffic you can know that they are not your target customers. there are more combination abut use those all together to analyse your site and improve it. that's why they offer you those information.
I find that the more experience I gain at this whole website thing, the more I'm interested in keeping track of pageviews, etc. I have one site that I'm absolutely failing at because my pageviews suck and time spent on each page sucks. But, my other sites that are doing well I would expect them to have a high pageview # (a video site and arcade). So niche plays a factor in pageviews I think....
My site is Microsoft so its very skant on the site reports it offers. I can't tell if people return, not how long they stay - just unique visitors and the average number of pages they view. What would you do in this circumstance?
Okey, i see your interest knowing more about your site. You can use this Free service by Google called Google Analytics. You just need to put a small javascript code in the bottom of every page of your website and you are done. Then login to analytics and find all what you want to know about your site. It is really a useful free service provided by Google, give it a try if you want to know more about your site.