SoKy Local Business or "SoKybiz"

FINALLY! Someone gets it!!!

Nielsen Scraps Web Page View Rankings
Jul 10, 10:12 AM (ET)
By ANICK JESDANUN

NEW YORK (AP) - A leading online measurement service will scrap rankings based on the longtime industry yardstick of page views and begin tracking how long visitors spend at the sites.

The move by Nielsen/NetRatings, announced Tuesday, comes as online video and new technologies increasingly make page views less meaningful.

Although Nielsen already measures average time spent and average number of sessions per visitor for each site, it will start reporting total time spent and sessions for all visitors to give advertisers, investors and analysts a broader picture of what sites are most popular.

read all @ http://apnews.myway.com//article/20070710/D8Q9P8I80.html

I've been using the "time on site" vs the number of page view for years. I've always known that if a person is spending 1.5 seconds on a page, they didn't read it, they just reacted to something they saw and clicked on it. They click on 5-10 pages and then leave, what did they take away from the website? Not much I venture.

Alternatively, pick another session when a visitor only views 3 pages but stays on those pages for a minute or more and now we have accomplished something! They have actually read what we have published and thus, the message has been effectively delivered. I've always believed this and tried to explain to my clients that time per session is much greater than number of page views.

Interesting, not long ago "hit count" was used as a measuring stick. I fought that one too. Simply put, each web page is made up of pictures, graphics and other files. One view of the page could result in many "hits" on the server so the number is inflated. Sure, 1,000,000 hits looks great on the pie chart, but it sure doesn't help measure the actual reach of the website.

The article quoted also make another great point. In this new era of "Ajax" website where only small elements of the page change as needed, the actually page address may never change. That said, it is still possible (and important) to review the logs to see what elements are being requested so the site can continue to offer popular elements and eliminate unused sections.

It is possible to get a "page view" count by monitoring the Ajax elements that are called, there is no doubt, and to me, those would qualify as a page view. For advertisers however, it's hard for them to measure their effectiveness without knowing how long their ad sat in front of the visitor and then of course, did the visitor click it, or ignore it?

Then there are the flash games, video and music streams that may cause people to loiter on a page for a long time. Again, depending on the media, you can measure the number of "full views" vs a simple click by matching the IP address with the amount of bandwidth transferred.

For example. The video presentation of the widget is 100mb and has 45 clicks. YEA! We have reached 45 potential customers. Right? But a closer look indicates that only 500mb have actually been downloaded. This is where you have to look closer. Odds are that only 2 or 3 visitors actually watched the video and several others watched a portion of it.

(Insert long post about effective media production and communications techniques here.)

The point is, a small business person should make himself or herself familiar with how the web works, at least enough to question their service provider to produce statistics that truly represent the effectiveness of the website. Just as we quantify the dollars we spend on other forms of advertising, we should quantify the effectiveness of our virtual presence as well.

It really depends on how much you rely on the internet for your revenue, or how much you would like your internet revenue to grow, as to how much time, effort and money you should invest in analyzing the traffic through your website.

For example, if you have an online store and rely on the revenue from that store to support your business, then you should be looking at the browsing habits of your visitors. Where are they coming from? What are they looking at? And yes, how long are they spending on each page. You may quickly see an opportunity to sell a product by discovering that people are spending time on a product page and not buying. You can look for reasons why they are not buying; heck, you may even discover that the "add to cart" button doesn't work.

Watch your stats! If you don't have good stats from your service provider, there are a number of free and fee ones out there. Google "web stats" for more information.

At the end of the day, I don't sort my visitors by the number of page views; I sort them by the length of time they spend on the site. I then order the results by the length of time they spend on each page. Now I can see what people think is interesting and what they do not.

Happy selling!

This was posted by SoKy : 5:39 PM