In the Ajax age, the pageview is a dying metric

Posted by Martin Stabe on 10 July 2007 at 15:22
Tags: ABCe, Ajax, Nielsen, metrics, video

In the latest move in the eternal debate about the most appropriate metrics for measuring web sites’ readership, the Internet market research firm Nielsen/Netratings has added new time-based metrics to its profiles.

The Internet market research firm has added “total minutes” and “total sessions” alongside existing “average time per person” and “average number of sessions per person” to the metrics it records for web sites.

Because of the growing use of technologies that allow users to obtain large amounts of information from a single page, online pundits have long been predicting “the death of the pageview” as an online media metric. This certainly appears to be another step in that direction.

Ajax-based web development is allowing content to be refreshed while users remain on a single page. Playing a streaming audio or video file also provide far more user engagement than the single pageview they record would suggest.

The pageview metric “under-credits such engagement”, Nielsen/Netratings said in a statement today. By contrast, a time-based metrics allow a measurement of user engagement that is independent of the technologies used in different sites’ design.

The big winners when applying the new metrics are web-based instant messenger applications, multimedia players, and social networking sites with large, loyal user base.

Among news sites, a shift time-based metrics rewards news organizations like CNN, whose recent Ajax-heavy redesign probably sacrificed pageviews for usability. Its tabbed story pages allow users to move between different media while remaining on the same page.

Hopefully de-emphasising pageviews will discourage bad design practices developed to inflate pageview figures, such as linear photo galleries where dozens of pictures are posted on separate pages with buttons herding users through endless refreshes. Good riddance.

See also: Shane Richmond at Telegraph.co.uk.

New blog seeks answers to newspapers’ web questions

Posted by Martin Stabe on 23 March 2007 at 11:17
Tags: Blogs, CN Group, News & Star, Online, Regionals, University of Central Lancashire, metrics

Nick Turner, the head of digital content at the Carlisle-based CN Group, has responding to a Press Gazette story about regional newspapers’ growing online readership, with a letter announcing a new blog for newspapers’ web editors:

You might like to add the News & Star to your list with its 151,082 unique users in January.

However, while it’s nice to report such a figure for a site without a Premiership football team to help boost its traffic you are right to caution against comparisons. Anyone trying to work out a system of common measurement will soon find their head spinning. The News & Star’s figures have actually dropped 16% year on year, for example, but this is because picture sales, property and other services have been moved to different sites.

However, it’s good to see a willingness to exchange information as we all try to reach an understanding of how our titles are most likely to flourish in the digital age. To this end I have working with the Journalism Department at the University of Central Lancashire to establish the Digital Editors’ Network (RSS) to support journalists working on media websites.

On the blog itself, Turner explains its aims:

… the Digital Editors’ Network is about helping those of us who are responsible for making it happen. We might be able to work out together the best ways to tackle issues such as search engine optimisation, maximising the potential of videos, developing ad revenues and increasing user generated content.

In many cases this can be achieved with a phone call or email to ask: Have you tried this? Or how does that feature on your website work?

Hopefully, we can do this in a way that is not constrained by the competition between rival media.

This is certainly a blog to add to your RSS reader.