Web site hits

I maintain a web site hosted on IIS on Nt server 4.0. Our programmers have put a counter on the home page which increments by one for every new session. My web hosting service provider gives us a log analyser report which measures the number of hitsof the web site by measuring every request that the web server receives. That means that if I have a static web page with 5 images, then that counter will be incremented by 6 for every new visitor to that page, one for the page request, and five forthe five images. I want to know which is the correct way of measuring web site hits? Do you increment for every one session, or do you increment for every request that the web server gets? ‘Shall be grateful for any help.

Sarkar