High hit rate, but few orders, should she believe it?

Question

My friend knows a guy who set up her website. He's new at this, just did a course, but she's thrilled at the high hit rate displayed on the order page. Only a few orders in, but she thinks this means people are planning to order soon. Anyone who refreshes the screen increments the count by one. It's not my area, & I'm not asking for your techie secrets, but I would like to know if this effect is usually avoided by more experienced site designers, and if you think she's being too optimistic.I think he might be trying to impress her a bit too hard with a trick.

Answer 1

You should be able to find out how many unique visitors there are to a website.  Any web traffic log worth anything is going to show you the IP address of the site visitor.