Key Metrics For Website + Weblog Analytics - A Primer
Web metrics and analytics can be a fairly complex topic, but for the purposes of analyzing the performance of your weblog (or website), you only need to understand a few key metrics, how to analyze them, then how to improve your website. At least as a starting point.
But which metrics are important? Someone asked me to write an e-report early this year and list some key website/ weblog metrics. It was not an easy task. Who was I to decide which metrics were important and which were not?
Why so difficult? Because which metrics are important to you may not be important to me, and vice versa. Similarly, there is a difference in what is key to a webmaster and what is key to a blogmaster.
For example, I run on budget hosting. I have a certain allowable amount of bandwidth allowed on some of my sites. If I go over, it’s going to cost me. That means I probably should be keeping an eye on my monthly bandwidth metrics, including plotting a daily chart and watching the trends. (Unfortunately, budget hosts do not give you access to your web server logs, which I learned the hard way.) You, on the other hand, may be responsible for a corporate site and thus have a professional hosting plan. Bandwidth may not be an issue.
Another example: I as a blogger may be more concerned with the number of comments I’m getting, or the number of times my free e-book has been downloaded. You might be concerned with the number of repeat visitors you are getting, because your metrics data shows that that generates leads and, eventually, sales.
Still, there are some metrics which most webmasters and blogmasters would consider to be “key”. Within a certain set of values, at least some of these will be important to pretty much everyone. Assume that these sites are generating revenue, either through advertising, affiliate programs, direct online sales, or sales leads. Let’s have a look at what those might be, in alphabetical order. Keep in mind that these are general metrics. To make the discussion simpler, I have typically have not mentioned whethere we’re talking daily, weekly, monthly, seasonal, or yearly metrics. Usually we’re talking daily metrics.
Ad clicks
This is only valuable to those sites that run pay-per-click advertising. That is, if the advertiser pays you for each legitimate click on one of their ads running on your website.Ad impressions
If you are, or plan to be, running CPM ads (paid prorated for every 1000 impressions), then this is a metric you want to collect. In fact, you may have to report it to an advertiser or ad network. This metric can be misleading. If I have two ads from the same ad network on every page of my site, that typically means that the number of ad impressions is double the number of pageviews. For pay-per-click advertising, this metric is not that important.Bandwidth
If your host allows you X gigabytes of bandwidth each month for your website, and you have reason to believe you might exceed that limit, then you should track this metric, and calculate peak periods, not just daily averages. For example, the video-serving site youtube.com generates humungous amounts of monthly bandwidth but no income. Which makes people wonder how they’ll pay for it all.Comments
This is a weblog-specific metric. Most “regular” websites do not have commenting capabilities. This metric varies in importance level from blogger to blogger, and should also include trackbacks. Trackbacks are comments that are auto-generated and are actually a snippet of text from a web page on another site that links to one of your pages. For example, if you post an article that links to this very page, a trackback comment will eventually show up below (provided it’s not spam). When you view that trackback, you’ll recognize that its text is an excerpt from your pageCPC
Cost per click. For an advertiser, this metric refers to how much they are spending, on average for every click of one of their ads, regardless of the website. For a webmaster or blogmaster, it means how much you are earning, on average, for every click of a PPC (pay-per-click) ad running on your website.CPM
Cost per M, M=1000 ad impressions. Again, has slightly different meanings depending on whether you are an advertiser or site owner. For site owners, this metric is a prorated value indicating what you are earning, on average, for every thousand ad impressions or pageviews. So if you had 300 page views today and earned $6 in ad revenue (either PPC or CPM), then your CPM is ($6/300) x 1000 =~ $20.Of course, CPM can be a highly misleading value. Just because you earned $6 for 300 page views (or ad impressions, or a combo) does not mean you’ll earn anything for the remaining 700 pageviews. So if you are tracking the CPM of one of your sites throughout the day, the value is probably dropping as the day progresses.
CTR
Click-through rate. Measures the average number of ad clicks for every 100 pageviews or impressions - depending on whether you are running PPC or CPM ads. You should measure these separately, to track the effectiveness of different types of ads.# Leads
This could be offline data, but usually it’ll come from a “fill out your details” type of web form. This could also be turned into a lead percentage, by dividing the number of leads generated by the number of pageviews or visitors. This value may or may not be key to determining ROI (Return On Investment), discussed below.Pageviews
This is not the same as hits. Hits are an inflated value that includes all types of files, including images, that are served up when someone views your webpages. A pageview metric is more honest and typically smaller, unless you have no graphics whatsoever. For example, if you have a website with a single page and it displays four images, then each pageview generates 1+4 = 5 hits. Thus, hits are meaningless, except maybe to calculate bandwidth.Referrals
Are other sites linking to you? Fine. Now is anyone visiting your website from one or more of those sites? How many people per site, and in total? This is the number of referrals.Revenue
The revenue metric can be measured in numerous ways, depending on how your site is set up. Maybe you’re getting paid for CPC or CPM ads, earning affiliate revenue for CPA (Cost Per Action) activities (say leads, subscriptions, purchases). Or maye you are selling something online, or even offline. This is one of the few metrics that while it could be estimated daily, is probably calculated monthly, once all revenue information is in.ROI
ROI means Return On Investment. It can be calculated in many ways. Let’s say that you are a webmaster responsible for a corporate site (it’s not as much of an issue for bloggers). You know that total monthly revenue for your employer, either directly due to ads, or due to sales from leads and/or online purchases totals $10,000/m. Say that your salary, the cost of equipment, rent and hosting totals about $7,500/m. The return on investment is (10000 - 7500)/10000 = .25 = 25% ROI.Visitors
The number of visitors you have might not be as important as the number of repeat visitors. Does the revenue on your site depend on people coming back? Are they coming back? Is a graph of the number of returning visitors increasing, on average? Related to this is the number of times they come back during a certain time period, as well as how many pages they view in each visit (aka session).Obviously, this is just a selection of all possible website metrics. It’s only my opinion, but I feel that the above are some of the key metrics that webmasters and blogmasters will/ should be concerned with. I’ll discuss these metrics individually in the future.
[…] Bloggers and entrepreneurs who run/ own a website get obsessed with watching the day’s web metrics - especially if the website earns revenue. I’m no different. But what twelve years of working online has taught me is that you cannot get worried over a single’s days visitor metrics (unique visitors, pageviews, conversions, etc.). Else it’s too easy to not see the forest for the trees. Some tips: […]
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