Using Web Analytics for Newsroom Decisions is a presentation about using data and metrics to help news and nonprofit organizations build and retain audiences. The presentation discusses [1] setting quantifiable site goals, [2] mapping metrics to goals to determine what needs to be measured, and [3] using key performance indicators like visits, page views, and bounce rates to track traffic by topic and gauge audience engagement. It emphasizes measuring outcomes over weak metrics, tracking new vs. returning visitors, and interpreting data differently for radio vs. web-focused organizations.
BCE24 | Virtual Brand Ambassadors: Making Brands Personal - John Meulemans
Using Web Analytics for Newsroom Decisions
1. Using Web Analytics
for
Newsroom Decisions
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
d / d b
May 2011
Dana Chinn
Twitter: @danachinn
2. My mission
To help news and nonprofit organizations
build
b ild and retain audiences
d t i di
by using data for decision-making
• Setting site goals
• Mapping metrics to goals, or,
determining what needs to be measured
• Using Key Performance Indicators
for
f news sites
it
• Tracking traffic by topic
• Using site data about streaming, radio
programming and web-only content
3. Using data effectively starts
with clarifying organizational goals
y g g g
vs. individual site goals
Start here
not here
3
5. Each individual site needs
specific audience goals
Is each individual site reaching and
engaging its highest priority
targeted audiences?
t t d di ?
Does it have the content it needs to
oes t a e t e co te t t eeds
reach its targeted audiences?
5
6. Using data for decision-making
decision making
You h d to cut one reporter.
Y had t t t
How should the others re-
arrange their time?
You got new funding!
What should be covered
– something new or
something more?
Should you partner with another
organization?
6
7. What does a site need to do
to
t achieve its quantifiable goals?
hi it tifi bl l ?
Has content, but not the audience,
or not enough of the audience
-- navigation, design
-- marketing
Has the
audience,
audience but
not the content
Doesn t
Doesn’t have the content or the
audience
--Add content – how much? what
type? Have the expertise already?
Reassign or hire?
8. What needs to be measured:
All ways a person can engage with y
y p g g you*
* not “all the places you put content and hope everyone will come”
Computer
p
SEARCH
Home 1
Work SITES
Public
SOCIAL MEDIA
Mobile devices
WAP/mobile web
5-7
2 3
Apps
4 Tablet
8
9. “So what?” metrics waste time,
lead to analysis paralysis
Our site has 5,000 monthly unique visitors.
Last Tuesday that story got 20,000 page views.
The average time spent on our site last week
was 24 minutes.
Our iPhone app was downloaded 10,000 times.
We have 2,000 fans on our Facebook page
2 000 page.
We have 5,000 Twitter followers.
Measure only
what’s meaningful and useful
to make decisions
9
10. actions
What verbs indicate engagement?
Visit
Vi it , regularly
l l
Read/view content, a l
R d/ i lot
Interact,
Interact often
-- rate, print, vote, take a poll, click on an ad
-- share, e-mail, comment, contribute
10
11. Audiences, actions, metrics differ by channel
SITES SOCIAL MEDIA
*
Totals
1. Who? How many?
In target audience? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
2. No. f i i ?
2 N of visits?
How often? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
3. What did they see? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
Did they get want
they wanted?
4. Did they interact?
y ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
What did they do?
How much?
11
* Different metrics, methodologies for each channel!
12. Two types of web analytics data
Behavioral research
What people did
when they came to your site,
as captured by
an action taken on a keyboard or mouse
Attitudinal research
What people say they did
what they think
and
why
as captured by
surveys, focus groups, social media, usability studies
12
13. Behavioral research
Key Performance Indicators
for news sites
f it
Overall site indicators
1. Visits
2. Visits from new vs. returning
visitors
When you enter Google Analytics, set up “Advanced
3. Visits per weekly unique visitor Segments” to see new and returning visitors for all
metrics
4. Page views per visit
5. Bounce rate (percent of one-page
visits) of the top landing page
Drill-down indicators that will give more detail on what happened
6. Visits by topic
7. Visits to radio vs. web content, by topic
13
14. Need to track by week – not month –
to
t make the data actionable
k th d t ti bl
One-time big news
g
event
or
new section launch
or
technical problem?
• Seasonality
• General effects of external and internal events
• Technical issues that affect data integrity and comparisons
• internal traffic
• coding problems
• site launches and consolidations
• Google Analytics uses samples if the number of visits for a specified
time period is greater than 500,000
15. Key Performance Indicator #1: Visits
A visit is counted
every time
someone comes to a site
t it
Visits: the strongest metric available
An increase in visits? Always good.
A decrease in visits? Always bad
bad.
15
16. Strong vs. weak metrics
Strong metrics are useful tools
that give clear indications
of what’s successful or not
c. Kyle Taylor
Weak metrics…
-- are conceptually flawed
“so what?” counts of things
so what?
-- are technically flawed
metrics calculated by c. Kyle Taylor
web analytics systems
b l ti t
in ways that give unclear indications
…could be so misleadingg
they could lead to bad decisions
16
17. Really weak metric #1: Unique visitors
A unique visitor is really a unique computer.
Unique visitors are either over-counted…
17
18. …or under-counted.
You don’t know when or by how much.*
y
library, school,
?
Internet cafe
* It doesn’t matter anyway….better to measure outcomes (did
people do what you wanted?) than the number of people who came to
your site. 18
19. Really weak metric #2: Page views
An increase in page views can be good -
or bad.*
Bad design, navigation, site architecture?
design navigation
Lots of page views, annoyed users
?
A redesign improved usability?
Fewer page views, happier users
Content that should be there but isn’t?
Lots of page views, annoyed users
Dynamic content?
Fewer page views, happier users (probably)
* It doesn’t matter anyway….better to measure outcomes (did
people do what you wanted?) than the number of pages people went
to when they came to your site. 19
20. Really weak metric #3: Time spent on site
An increase in average time spent on
g p
site can be good - or bad.*
Bad design, navigation, site architecture?
?
Lots of time spent, annoyed users
A redesign improved usability?
Less time spent, happier users
spent
* It doesn’t matter anyway….better to measure outcomes (did
people do what you wanted?) than how much time people spent on
your site. 20
21. Systems only measure the time spent
in b t
i between pages on a site, so…
it
?
The time spent of a user who g
p goes only to
y
one page is NOT included in the time spent
calculation.
1
minute The time spent on the last page
of a site isn’t counted at all.
10
minutes
Time spent = 1 minute
Site
X
21
22. Are you attracting new audiences?
i di
Key Performance Indicator #2
y
Visits from new visitors
vs.
Visits from returning
g
visitors
22
23. Generally, is your site engaging visitors?
How often are they visiting?
What,
What how much are they seeing?
Key Performance Indicator #3
Visits per unique visitor
Is an
average of
3 visits a
week for a
24/7 site
enough?
Key Performance Indicator #4
Page views per visit
Is an
average of
3 pages per
p g p
visit for a
site that
produces a
lot of 23
content?
24. When audiences - new and returning -
Wh di d t i
come, are they staying?
Key Performance Indicator #5
Bounce rate percent
of the landing page
where most visits start
“I came. I saw. I puked.”
-- Avinash Kaushik on bounce rate
A bounce: a visit with only one page view 24
27. Is your site set up…
….with navigation that uses terms
that appeal to your audience and help them find what
they’re looking for?
….so you can track traffic by topic throughout
so
your site?
27
28. OnCentral believes that News & Politics stories are crucial to
serving audiences who live and work in the Central Avenue area.
How many News & Politics stores are produced each week?
How much traffic do News & Politics stories get per week?
29. What is “news” and what is “politics?”
How many political stories are there? What types of politics?
How much traffic did political stories get the week of March 13?
30. Is each page coded in a way to get this information?
32. …unless each story is coded or classified.
Does OnCentral have enough
local politics stories to build
a Central Avenue audience?
How many stories on local
politics did it have the week
of March 13? What percent of
p
OnCentral’s content is about
local politics?
How much traffic did local
politics stories get the week of
March 13?
Does it have enough
multimedia content on local Note: In Google Analytics use
politics? unique page views as a proxy for
visits
Does it have stories from all
areas of OnCentral?
33. Should a site be
a supplement to radio/TV
or
a 24/7 news source on its own?
Metrics that show what type of content audiences use
indicate how engaged audiences are with the news org
Level of
engagement
g g
- Listen to live stream
- Listen to radio programming
- Use web content
- Listen to live stream/radio programming and
use web content
- Interact with news org. based on live stream or radio
- Interact with news org. based on web content
33
34. Home page bounce rates for radio news organizations
may need to be interpreted differently
if the goal is to build the site to stand on its own
g
A visit that enters the site through the home page…
…and
goes only to
the live stream
and radio
content…
…is not counted as a “bounce” in Google Analytics.
BUT it should be interpreted as a visit that’s not
h ld b i t t d i it th t’ t
interested or engaged with web content.
34
Also, this is another reason why time-on-site for a radio news org isn’t a meaningful metric.
35. Two types of decision-making
HIghest Paid Person’s Opinion
Person s
-- Avinash Kaushik, Google
Decision-making with data
• S t specific, quantifiable site goals
Set ifi tifi bl it l
• Use meaningful metrics;
monitor weekly;
y;
distinguish between traffic
from external events vs. newsroom actions
• Analyze traffic by audience type and topic
• Understand site goals and traffic before
tackling attitudinal survey research,
social media metrics,
mobile metrics
35