Web metrics for community news organizations

March 2010

Using web metrics to improve your site A presentation for the Knight Digital Media Center Knight Community Information Challenge Boot Camp

Dana Chinn

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• What’s noise vs. signals

• Questions to ask of your data

What data will give you answers

• Planning your site with metrics in mind

• A metrics assignment

www.slideshare.net/danachinn@danachinn

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Data, data everywhereI think I could sink

Data, data everywhereWill someone please help me think.

Rishad Tobaccowalla, CEO, Denuo at OMMA Metrics & Measurement, June 2009

“Dutch boats in a squall” by J.M.W Turner

The Rime of the Ancient Web Analytics Analyst

With apologies to Coleridge and mariners, ancient and otherwise

4--The ”famous metrics” term comes from web analytics guru Avinash Kaushik

“After the disaster in Haiti, [our site] hit

168.6 million pageviews in the month of January. A new record.”

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• Panel dataActivity from a sample of self-selected people. Only total site data for a limited number of sites.

• Marketing, trending, external comparisons

• comScoreNielsenCompeteetc.

• Interactive Advertising Bureau

Decision-making Advertising, marketing

Internal vs. external metrics

• Census data100% of all visitors, visits, page views for all sections

• Analysis, decisions, actions, evaluation

• OmnitureGoogle AnalyticsWebTrendsetc.

• Web Analytics Association

Noise:

Signals:

Recognizing the signals amid the noise

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Everything, every one, every second of every day

Metrics you select for decision-making

-- Mark Smiciklas, IntersectionConsulting.com

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Only look at the signals you need

• How your site traffic changes due to external eventsso you can determine whether your actions made a difference (or not)

• Whether your actions led to the results that you anticipated

You need to know

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What decisions do you need to make?

Which metrics will help you?

(How are sites are measured?)

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What people do (behavioral)

Who they are, what they think (attitudinal)

Two types of web metrics

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Unique visitors

visit websites,

generate page views.

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YouYour Data

Questions to ask your data

Did people visit our site more than once last week?

Was this more or less than previously?If more, was it due to an outside event, OR

was it something we did?

If less, was there a holiday, ORdid we not do something?

Was the increase as much as expected?

Was the drop as much as anticipated?

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visits per unique visitor

Did people visit our site more than once last week?

For every question...

...there’s an answer hiding in Google Analytics...

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...but you have to gopast the Dashboard...

visits per unique visitor

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default report shows a 5-week period

Use weekly metrics, full-week time periodsso you can identify unusual movement quickly

...change the time period, and customize the reports for your decisions

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On average, last week, how many stories did people see with each visit?

Did most visits come from returning visitors OR new ones?

Are we hooking in new visitors?

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page views per visit

On average, last week, how many stories did people see with each visit? Are we hooking in new visitors?

percent of visits from new visitors page views per new-visitor visit

percent of visits from returning visitors page views per returning-visitor visit

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When someone came to our site, what was the first page they saw?

Did they leave immediately when they saw it?

Did new visitors leave more than returning ones?

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When someone came to our site, what was the first page they saw? Did they leave immediately?

bounce rate of the page where people enter your site most often

1. Overall 2. Visits from new unique visitors3. Visits from returning unique visitors

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Bounce rate of top entry pages

One visit with one page view

to the home page= 1 bounce

No. of bounces+

No. of visits that started with the home page and had 2+ page views

= 100% of visits

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Source: “Can CNN, the Go-To Site, Get You to Stay?” by Brian Stetler, New York Times, Jan. 17, 2009

Home page bounce rateExample

= over 50%

Over half of the visits to the CNN.com home pageleft CNN.com without clicking into any other pages

Best (?) cases: Came only to get the headlines

Worst cases: Couldn’t find what they wanted Didn’t like what they saw

Home page has dynamic content not captured with page views

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Need to translate this...

...to information used for decisions

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Put “please donate by going to ourspecialcampaignURL.com” at the beginning

Measure engagement...

...and construct your site to maximize success

No. of podcasts -- put on iPod -- played -- listened to the end

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The perfect (measurable) Tweet

• A call to action to participate, engage with youLook at this. Go here. What do you think?

• A link To get news, information Tweets are now a primary news source, the new home page

To respond to the call to action

• A #hashtag and/or keywords

• Handle specific to person/topic

• A comment

RT/via @handle + call to action/comment + link + #hashtag

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“Perfect” tweets are less than 120 characters

Lost the link

Watch handle, hashtag sizes

100 characters 111 characters

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What people do (behavioral)

Who they are, what they think (attitudinal)

Two types of web analytics metrics

1. What was the purpose of your visit today?

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Some questions that can’t be answeredfrom web traffic data

2. Were you able to complete your task today?

3. If not, why not?

4. If you did complete your task, what did you enjoy most about our site?

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in the numbers you want?

and

Are you reaching the audiences you meant to reach

Is it your content?

Is it your design?

Is it you?

Web analytics is not easy...

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• Have clearly defined, accountable goals, objectives on which everyone agrees each of which is someone’s direct responsibility

• Know the limitations of your data, metrics Guess rather than rely on bad data, metrics

• Dedicate people, processes to analytics Technology, software are just tools

• Let the hippos decide whether metricswill really be used for decisions Use only what you need

HIghest Paid Person’s Opinion

Your metrics assignment

• List all of your target audiences and stakeholders --residents (what areas), businesses (what types), government (what depts) --teachers (what grade), students (how old), parents (what grade)

• List what you want them to do on your site --Write stories. Submit comments. Rate areas. Play game.

• List the decisions you’ll need to make --We need to increase the number of Westside participants --Can we double the impact of the five reporters we hired with the grant in the next year?

• Decide what metrics, site elements you need

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Residents, businesses, government officials will post content and debate solutions for the benefit of all stakeholders in Alexandria

Who will do what, for whom

Types of decisions needed How do we get more [residents] to participate? What issues aren’t on our site that should be?

The liquor store owners are dominating the discussion boards. We think they’re keeping the other businesses from participating. What should we do?

Sample metrics, site elements

Behavioral: Require registration to track who’s participating, how much? By group, track visits/unique visitor, comments posted Attitudinal: For each group, we will need to know awareness of the site, why they do or don’t post, problems they don’t see on the site, what it would take to get them to participate more

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To serve Akron residents and businesses, selected citizen journalists of all ages will get training and tools to create news stories, music, documentaries and videos for the web and mobile devices

Who will do what, for whom

Types of decisions neededIn what areas do we need to provide more training and tools? How can we help the unproductive citizen journalists to produce?

What should we do to increase the credibility of the content that’s produced?

Sample metrics, site elements Behavioral: Track the training/tools each citizen journalist gets vs. what types of content and how much they produce. Attitudinal: Need monthly meetings or surveys with citizen journalists. For each stakeholder group, we will need to know awareness of the site, how credible they consider the content, and do they want to become a citizen journalist.

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Dana Chinn Lecturer [email protected] 213-821-6259

Analytics for news orgs bookmarks http://www.delicious.com/danachinn

Presentations http://www.slideshare.net/danachinn

Twitter: DanaChinn

Blog http://www.newsnumbers.com