Anytime any data is uploaded to a shared website hosting account or downloaded from it, website traffic is generated which is a feature that each hosting plan has. It is moreover one of the characteristics you need to check out, as what amount of website traffic allowance you'll need depends on what exactly you need the account for. The website traffic is generally produced by downloads which includes website visits. In layman's terms, anytime someone goes to your web site, the web pages are downloaded from the server to his or her computer and they are then shown by their web browser. It's also important to be aware that uploads count as well, so that any time you copy large files from your pc to the server, some traffic will be generated too. Different providers often have different names for this specific feature, like traffic, bandwidth, data transfer, still all of them apply to the same thing - the amount of incoming & outgoing information produced for a given period of time.