1. © Rich Gordon 2014
What Gets Measured Gets Done:
Web and Social Analytics for Publishers
Knight Digital Media Center – April 2014
Rich Gordon
@richgor

2. © Rich Gordon 2014
The problem for publishers
• Lots of metrics: What should we keep track of?
• Publishers have unique measurement needs

3. © Rich Gordon 2014
What all businesses need:
Key Performance Indicators
Use of “Key Performance Indicators”
in books 1990-2008
Source: books.google.com ‘ngram viewer’
1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008

4. © Rich Gordon 2014
Propositions for today
• Every publisher should have a set of KPI’s that
are tracked consistently and regularly
– align to business goals (can be different for every
publisher)
– should be shared internally
– can be factored into personnel decisions
• Make a spreadsheet, update monthly
• Compare to last month, same month last year,
year over year, YTD this year vs. previous
years

5. © Rich Gordon 2014
• The most popular Web metrics toolkit
• Easy to set up, free to use
• Built more for direct marketers than
publishers – “acquisitions” and
“conversions”
• Constantly being modified by Google

6. © Rich Gordon 2014
What do publishers need to track?
• Scale: How big is our audience?
• Loyalty: How likely is our audience to
come back?
• Engagement: Once on the site, how
engaged is the audience with our
content?

7. © Rich Gordon 2014
Seven top-level metrics:
Which ones matter?
• Which metrics are best for
measuring audience over time?
– Size/scale
– Loyalty
– Audience engagement
Audience | Overview

8. © Rich Gordon 2014
User clicks
on link,
requests page
Content
server
delivers page
Ad requests
go to
ad server
To understand online metrics,
consider how the technology works

9. © Rich Gordon 2014
Your browser assembles files,
presents them to the user as a page
Each server that delivers a file
(HTML page, image, ad banner,
Google Analytics code)
can also deliver a “cookie”

10. © Rich Gordon 2014
So … what’s a cookie?
• A small text file saved to your computer
• In concept: benign
– Only the site that served you the cookie can access it
– No personal information is stored in the cookie
• Cookies exist because HTTP protocol is “stateless,”
and provide real utility
• They also enable the server to recognize you’re the
same computer that did something previously
.google.com TRUE / FALSE 2147368450
PREF ID= 3205648b2ceffdf1:TM=1001091062:LM=1001091062

11. © Rich Gordon 2014
Google’s vocabulary
keeps changing
• Unique Visitors è People è Users
• Visits è Sessions
• Time on Site è Visit Duration è
Session Duration

12. © Rich Gordon 2014
Audience vocabulary,
for starters
• Users (Unique Visitors): The total number of unique
persons visiting a Web site at least once in a time
period (usually one month). Persons visiting the same site
more than one time in the period are counted only once.

13. © Rich Gordon 2014
Audience vocabulary,
for starters
• Users (Unique Visitors): The total number of unique
persons visiting a Web site at least once in a time
period (usually one month). Persons visiting the same site
more than one time in the period are counted only once.
browsers visiting

14. © Rich Gordon 2014
Audience vocabulary,
for starters
• Users (Unique Visitors): The total number of unique
persons visiting a Web site at least once in a time
period (usually one month). Persons visiting the same site
more than one time in the period are counted only once.
• Session (Visit): A continuous series of URL/page
requests. A gap of 30 minutes between URL requests
ends a session/visit.
• Pageviews: The total number of times a Web page is
requested by a user. Counted only when page fully loads
in browser window.
• Bounce Rate: Portion of sessions that are exactly one
page view.
browsers visiting

15. © Rich Gordon 2014
Unique visitors vs. visits
(GA: Users vs. sessions)
• Remember that what’s really being counted here
is cookies
• A session (visit) happens any time the server
delivers a new cookie or reads an existing cookie
on the user’s computer.
• Users (unique visitors) are counted each time a
cookie to a new user/computer (or a user/
computer the server believes is new)
• A new visitor is a computer/browser that has not
been seen before in the selected time period (a
week, a month, a year, etc.)

16. © Rich Gordon 2014
Users or unique visitors:
Totals are getting worse and worse
• Every browser on every device has its own
cookies
• To Google Analytics, in a given month, I could be
as many as 12 users:
– Chrome and Firefox on my work laptop
– Chrome and Firefox on my home laptop
– Chrome and Firefox on my iPad
– Safari and Chrome on my iPhone
– Occasionally, Safari and Chrome on my son’s Mac
– Occasionally, Chrome and Firefox on my wife’s PC
– And that doesn’t count shared classroom computers

17. © Rich Gordon 2014
Questions so far?

18. © Rich Gordon 2014
Among basic metrics, track …
• Size/scale: SESSIONS (visits)
• Loyalty: % RETURNING
VISITORS
• Engagement: PAGES/SESSION

19. © Rich Gordon 2014
Another metric for measuring
loyal vs. infrequent visitors
Audience | Behavior | Frequency & Recency
Over 1 year:
• % of sessions
by Fly-Bys (1-2
sessions)
• % of sessions
by Regulars
(51+ sessions)

20. © Rich Gordon 2014
What about the other metrics?
• Pageviews: Easily manipulated – can reward
site practices that users hate
– Articles spanning multiple pages, slideshows, etc.
• Bounce Rate: More appropriate for direct
marketing campaigns, but worth tracking –
strive for improvement over time
• What about Average Session Duration
(previously Time on Site or Visit Duration)?

21. © Rich Gordon 2014
http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2008/01/
standard-metrics-revisited-time-on-page-and-time-on-site.html
The problem with visit duration:
How it’s calculated
The last page of
any visit counts
as zero duration!

22. © Rich Gordon 2014
Where does site traffic come from?
Acquisition | Overview

23. © Rich Gordon 2014
Where does site traffic come from?
Search from Google, etc.
Type URL or bookmark
* From Twitter, Facebook,
Tumblr, etc.
Links from other sites
Other
Clicks from email clients
Paid ads on Google, etc.

24. © Rich Gordon 2014
Referring sessions (visits)
from social media
Percentage of
referral sessions
(and all sessions)
driven by:
– Facebook
– Twitter
– Reddit
– Disqus
– LinkedIn
– Blogger
– etc.
Acquisition | Social | Overview

25. © Rich Gordon 2014
For social visits, also look at
the “Other” category
Acquisition | Overview | Channels | Other For many sites, the
largest “other”
referrers will be
services that
publishers use to
distribute headlines
via social media.
Consider counting
these as social
media referrals

26. © Rich Gordon 2014
Which referrals are most valuable:
Pages/session by source
Compare pages/
session from
specific referring
sites:
• Google
• Facebook
• t.co (Twitter)
• other sites
Acquisition | All Referrals

27. © Rich Gordon 2014
Percentage of sessions
starting on home page
Direct visitors (most start on home page) view:
• 6x as many pages/session as Facebook visitors
• 5x as many pages/session as search visitors
Behavior | Site Content | Landing Pages
http://www.journalism.org/2014/03/13/social-search-direct/

28. © Rich Gordon 2014
Behavior | Site Content | Landing Pages
Engagement:
Sessions starting on home page
• Visitors arriving on the home page should
view more pages and not “bounce”

29. © Rich Gordon 2014
Engagement:
Phone vs. tablet vs. computer
• Pages/session for mobile & tablet will likely be lower
• Mobile-friendly (“responsive”) design should reduce this
difference
• Can drill down to specific devices
Audience | Mobile | Overview

30. © Rich Gordon 2014
Can you improve your metrics?
Some ideas
Goal Tactics
Scale
More sessions
• Increase social media activity
• Build traffic-building partnerships
• Improve SEO
Loyalty
More returning visitors
• Add email newsletters
• Increase social media activity
Engagement
More pages/session
• Better navigation
• Display links to more content (especially
related content) on article pages
Mobile engagement
More pages/session
• Use “responsive design” approach so your site
is more usable on phones/tablets

31. © Rich Gordon 2014
Social media:
Facebook Insights

32. © Rich Gordon 2014
Useful Facebook metrics
• Growth in “likes” – month over month, vs.
same month last year
• Likes per 1,000 sessions
• Total reach (people who saw your posts)
– by day, week, 28-day period
• Engaged users (share, like, click, comment)
– by day, week, 28-day period

33. © Rich Gordon 2014
Useful Facebook metrics
• Engagement rate (formerly “Virality”): Engaged
users / Total reach
– By week, 28-day period
• Click rate: Post clicks per total reach
– By week, 28-day period
• Share rate: Post shares per total reach
– By week, 28-day period
• Comment rate: Post comments per total reach
– By week, 28-day period

34. © Rich Gordon 2014
Social media:
Twitter
• Followers
• Growth in followers
• Followers per 1,000
sessions
• Retweets per week
• Retweets per month

35. © Rich Gordon 2014
Social media:
Twitter
Follower : following ratio
• High: Many people are
listening to you
– Using Twitter mostly
for distribution
• Low: Youre listening
to many people
– Using Twitter to
monitor your
community

36. © Rich Gordon 2014
What could we learn if metrics
were aggregated for many sites?
• Sites that outperform could be examined to
understand what they were doing differently
• Northwestern journalism/computer science
team is prototyping a benchmarking tool
• Share your metrics with us (and no one else)
by filling out this survey:
http://bit.ly/pbenchmark

37. © Rich Gordon 2014
Thank you!
richgor@northwestern.edu
@richgor
Help us prototype a benchmarking tool
Share your metrics with Northwestern team
(and no one else)
by filling out this survey:
http://bit.ly/pbenchmark