Feb 18 what we learned kcic

Knight Community Information Challenge metrics review: What

did we learn?Data review and best practices from Knight

Community Information Challenge grantees Susan Mernit, KCIC Circuit Rider

February 18, 2012

Background• In Q3 2011, Knight Circuit Riders for the Community Information

Challenge worked with 27 of the 2009-2011 grantees to gather and assess data from their Google Analytics dashboards. (Google Analytics is a free, easy to install tool that allows site operators of any type to check and measure their web traffic, number of pages viewed, unique visitors, etc.)

• In this exercise we learned a lot about what was average and best performance

• We also saw some key metrics that look like factors—or even predictors—for excellent performance

• In this presentation, we review this data and offer recommendation everyone can use to strengthen some audience behaviors on their own site

Knight Community Information Challenge, Feb. 2012, all rights reserved, contact [email protected] for more info 2

Methodology: KCIC metrics review, Fall 2011

• Worked with 27 KCIC grantee projects to collect and review Q3 Google Analytics

• Analyzed dashboards to understand individual performance and look across at averages, best practices, common themes

• Collected more than 2,000 pieces of data from grantees, generated 35 charts and summaries

• Created a white paper & gave a webinar to review findings, share learnings


What metrics did we look at?

• We looked at metrics that would help assess the following questions for each site:– Reach: Are site’s existing audiences the ones you meant to connect

to?– Penetration: The extent to which the project/site is reaching – or not

– the intended audience– Engagement: What is the level of interaction and attention to your

site/project?• We looked across the metrics to understand:

– Baseline averages for every metric– Best performance metrics– Were there metrics that suggested longer-term success?


Looking at metrics from all the sites

• Across 27 sites: what did we see?– Wide discrepancy in some metrics

such as average monthly pages, average number of visits, number of uniques

– Less discrepancy in other metrics such as time spent on site, bounce rate, pages viewed per visit

– Broad discrepancies in referral sources average out across whole group


Averages from 26 sites

New insights on averages

• Averages across 27 sites:– Pages viewed per visit: 2.21– Time spent on site: 2.31

minutes– % of traffic going directly to

site URL: 28%– Average monthly visits:

27,403– Average pages viewed:

31,748

Knight Community Information Challenge, Feb. 2012, all rights reserved, contact

[email protected] for more info6

The “Strong 4”—strong performers across multiple metrics


•The Strong 4-set had higher averages for monthly pages viewed, monthly visits, new visitors and unique visitors than the group overall.•In terms of effective marketing and reach they offered a baseline that reflected better performance than averages from the larger set.

Four sites in the study—CT Mirror, NJ Spotlight, Health News Florida and The Notebook had strong performance across many of the metrics we measured

Four sites in the study—CT Mirror, NJ Spotlight, Health News Florida and The Notebook had strong performance across many of the metrics we measured

Comparing data



Strong 4: •More page views, monthly visits & unique visitors•MUCH higher percentage of returning visitors: 64% vs. 42%•More direct traffic: 37.1% vs. 28%

All sites

Strong 4 (above)

Similar metrics across the sites•Number of pages per visit, time spent, bounce rate

Similar metrics across the sites•Number of pages per visit, time spent, bounce rate

Deep dive: Looking at referral quality

• In this study, we asked site operators to collect 3 referral metrics:– Direct traffic: Traffic that

comes directly to your web URL

– Referring traffic: Other web sites and URLS that publish your link and URLS so people will click on them and visit

– Search engine traffic: Traffic that your site receives because on of your URLs appeared in a set of results on a search engine query and someone clicked on it.



Referral lessons to be learned• Best performers had the highest direct referral• Quality of referral makes a difference

– Understand where your referrals are coming from and how those users are behaving; get more of the “good” ones.


Recommendations•Segment your referrals and see how they behave

–Do the Facebook referrals out-perform the Twitter referrals in returning, time spent, pages viewed?.

•If your search engine referral is low, work on SEO

Recommendations•Segment your referrals and see how they behave

–Do the Facebook referrals out-perform the Twitter referrals in returning, time spent, pages viewed?.

•If your search engine referral is low, work on SEO

Referral sources vary in performance

• Direct traffic is something to market and drive as much as possible—but the goal should be to monitor and understand referrals from all sources.

• For referring traffic (links published by other web sites that are not search engines), the sites with the highest referrers were:– Access Austin: 57%– Town Square 49: 66%– The Rapidian: 45%– The Lens NOLA: 39%– NJ Spotlight: 31%

• The CT Mirror has a very evenly distributed mix of referrals that is a good model.– Direct traffic: 37%– Referring links: 23%– Search engine traffic: 37%

• According to Jim Cutie of the CT Mirror, this blend is due to effective marketing of their brand locally (direct traffic), strong partnerships with other local sites (The New York Times), an effective social media strategy driving traffic back to the web site (referring sites), and/or good search engine optimization (search engine referral).

• The CT Mirror has a very evenly distributed mix of referrals that is a good model.– Direct traffic: 37%– Referring links: 23%– Search engine traffic: 37%

• According to Jim Cutie of the CT Mirror, this blend is due to effective marketing of their brand locally (direct traffic), strong partnerships with other local sites (The New York Times), an effective social media strategy driving traffic back to the web site (referring sites), and/or good search engine optimization (search engine referral).


What drove referrals among CIC grantees?

• Town Square 49(Alaska): An email newsletter program and a third-party calendar drive traffic back to Town Square 49.

• The Rapidian (Grand Rapids, MI): Local bloggers, Facebook, Twitter, and a newsreader called Feedly.

• The Lens NOLA: Facebook, Slate.com, and the Lens newsletter, as well local bloggers and news sites.

• The NJ Spotlight top referring traffic is from their email tools/newsletters, local paper Philly.com, and Facebook.


Bounce rate

• Grantees in the study had an average bounce rate around 60-62%

• However, some referral sources—and some pages—have MUCH higher bounce rates than others

• Understanding bounce rate as a metric of customer satisfaction is smart-- – Pay attention if it’s above 65%; worry about 75%


The Top Ten List• What are the top points for site operators to remember as

take-aways from this study?– Regularly check your Google Analytics data; keep an active

monthly dashboard.– Watch the time-spent on site, pages viewed per visit

metrics to check engagement.– Check the returning visitors number as a way to measure

your committed core—and as a key to growing your other metrics.

– Pay attention to referral sources and follow up on what you learn in terms of potential partnership and distribution relationships.


Top Ten List 2

– If social media is key to your strategy, check its impact in your referral logs.

– Is search referral in your top 5 referring stats? If the answer is no, reflect on the search engine optimization of your site.

– Brand your site to drive direct traffic; i.e. make sure people know your URL as well as your name.

– Monitor your bounce rate and work to keep it below 62%.– Review the stats from the Strong 4 and compare them

your own site.– Benchmark and set data goals for 2012.


Resources for building skill with Google Analytics

• The following can be useful resources:– Google Analytics Help Center:

http://support.google.com/analytics/?hl=en – Google Analytics YouTube channel:

http://www.youtube.com/user/googleanalytics/featured

– Google Analytics blog: http://analytics.blogspot.com/

– Knight CIC circuit riders: We’re happy to share and inform.Knight Community Information Challenge, Feb. 2012, all rights reserved,

contact [email protected] for more info 16

http://support.google.com/analytics/?hl=en

http://analytics.blogspot.com/

Feb 18 what we learned kcic

Documents

Transcript of Feb 18 what we learned kcic