Metrics: Measuring Success
Are your website metrics reliable?May 05, 2008: Not only do many websites have unreliable metrics; they're usually measuring the wrong things. More
Web Metrics: Don't be a slave to the next HIT
November 05, 2007: Early website management was obsessed with volume. Today, an increasing number of page impressions can mean a website is failing rather than succeeding. More
Impediments to seeing information as a task
June 04, 2007: Those who created information rarely had to worry about the impact of what they wrote. Until the Web. More
Web's key management metric: task completion
May 28, 2007: Supposing someone has to visit 20 pages on a website to complete a task, when with better management, they would only have to visit 5. Thus, the more page impressions, the more frustrated customers become. More
Web task management principles
May 21, 2007: Web task management is about managing your website around common tasks. Success is measured on the completion of these tasks. More
Do you know what's in your Long Neck?
August 21, 2006: A website that doesn't understand what's in its Long Neck is doomed to underperformance, if not outright failure. More
Are you using the wrong web metrics?
May 15, 2006: Do you base success on measuring the volume of visitors and page impressions? Such measures may in fact reflect the failure-rather than the success-of your website. More
The true cost of content
March 06, 2006: Most content will never show a return on investment. The Web is overflowing with low-quality content. Sooner or later, senior management is going to pay serious attention to all this waste. More
Is your content a waste of time and money?
February 06, 2006: Most content gets in the way. It's poor quality. Nobody's interested in it, except those who create it. How much of this sort of content are you publishing? More
Metrics make the case for quality content
August 29,2005: The essential business case of a website is self-service. To maximize value from self-service, you want a limited menu, a fast transaction and a significant volume of people. More
Prove the value of your content with numbers
July 11, 2005: Getting senior management’s attention is about showing how costs can be reduced and/or value created. Content needs to show how it will reduce costs by X percent and increase productivity by Z percent. More
How to measure the value of your web content
January 24, 2005: The way to make web content more valued is to make it more measured. The more ways you can measure the value your content delivers, the more your career will be valued. More
What's important to measure on your website?
July 21 2003: Websites are very measurable. However, reams of data can be time consuming and confusing. The knack is to know what is really important to measure. This includes the following: reader actions; reader numbers; most and least popular pages; subscribers; external links; search keywords; page size; broken links and malfunctioning processes. More
Measuring your web content management processes
July 14 2003: What's really important to measure for your website? Firstly, you need to measure how successful you are at creating, editing and publishing content. These are your web content management processes. Secondly, you need to measure reader behavior. There will also be some core website performance issues to measure. This week, I'd like to examine key web content management process measurables. More
Start measuring the cost and value of your content
July 07 2003: Frederick W. Taylor, in his book, The Principles of Scientific Management (1911), wrote about how waste in activity was a greater problem than material waste. He wrote about planning, organizing, training, management and measurement, as ways to address the problem. Today, we require a new form of Taylorism; one that addresses efficiency in content publishing. More
The hippie period of the Web is over
March 17, 2003: Just like the Sixties, the Nineties are over. From free love to free information, it was all quite a ride. But that was then, this is now. The Web is growing up. It's time for definition, time for metrics, time for standard processes. More
The high cost of running a website
January 27, 2003: The Web has begun to mature. As this happens, managers are realizing that running a quality website is a very expensive business. Quality content does not come cheap. Many organizations are therefore beginning to question the return on investment they are seeing from their websites. More
Self-service requires people to deliver full benefit
January 20, 2003: Convenience is a major reason why people use the Web. It's faster and more efficient than getting in the car or picking up the phone. Many organizations see the Web as a self-service environment where labor costs can be reduced. Self-service and convenience are not always in sync. Where that happens, nobody benefits. More
Is your website convenient?
January 13, 2003: A fundamental promise of the Web is convenience. Why get in your car when you can sit at your computer? A fundamental building block of the business case for a website is self-service. By automating certain processes, costs are reduced, and the customer gets faster, cheaper service. Is your website fast, cheap and convenient? More
Do you know how much your content costs?
December 02, 2002: The creation of content is a significant and increasing cost for many organizations. However, few managers know how much they are spending on content. If you're not measuring the cost of content, you can't evaluate the return on investment it creates. If you can't measure content, you can't manage it. More
Measuring the value of your content
November 04, 2002: There is a classic saying in management: If you can't measure it, you can't manage it. Measuring content involves an understanding of knowledge and information. It involves seeing content as an asset. It involves clearly articulating the objectives you have for your content. It involves comparing how content performs against other forms of communication. More
Treat your content as an asset
October 28, 2002: Historically, organizations recognized that value lay in putting 'physical assets' to work. Gradually, more organizations began to recognize the value of 'human assets.' Today, the challenge and opportunity is to recognize the potential of 'content assets.' Increasingly, content assets are going to be a key source of value. More
The high cost of content management
June 24, 2002: Quality content is expensive to create, edit and publish. This is because it takes skilled people to create, edit and publish quality content. Technology has added unnecessarily to the cost of content management by offering convoluted and complex solutions. Organizations have not properly planned for their publishing processes. This has added cost, increased frustration and reduced efficiency. More
Your website should encourage people to act
June 17, 2002: The purpose of a website is to encourage action. A successful ecommerce website gets people to spend money. A successful intranet helps people do their work more productively. Your website should have as many calls to action as possible. The more a person acts on your website, the more likely your website is to succeed. More
When ecommerce beats commerce
April 22, 2002: Wherever comprehensive information is required to sell a product, service or idea, ecommerce can be a more efficient and cost-effective way of making that sale. In fact, ecommerce has clear advantages over commerce where high information, low margin products are being sold. More
Is your content being read?
March 25, 2002: The world is producing content at an extraordinary rate. However, people's capacity to read content remains basically the same. What percentage of the content that you publish on your website is actually being read? What are you going to do with the content which is never read? More
Content: Time saved versus time spent trade-off
July 02, 2001: They say content is king, but the Internet has very often treated content as a pauper. We are now, however, experiencing a period of transition with regard to everything to do with content. It’s a period where the focus will be on the value of content, and how to make a profit from delivering that content value to the reader. More
Measuring knowledge capital
March 05, 2001: There is an increasing recognition today that knowledge/intellectual capital is of greater significance to the success of a modern organization than physical capital. More
Get ready to pay for content
February 05, 2001: Between 1975 and 1995 the average academic journal price rose from $39 to $284 in the United States, almost twice the rate of inflation. In 1995, Forbes magazine stated that, “It's hard to imagine a sweeter business than publishing academic journals,” reporting that Reed Elsevier, a leader in academic publishing, had pre-tax profits of 40% on $225 million in journal sales. More
Internet content is invaluable
August 28, 2000: Right now, it’s extremely difficult to make money directly out of content on the Internet. That doesn’t mean that content on the Internet lacks value. In fact, content is the foundation upon which the vast majority of Web activity is built. More
Internet content isn't profitable
August 21, 2000: Something is wrong. Everyone agrees that content is central to the success of a website. Yet pure content/media companies are having a really difficult time making any profit. Those that do not have traditional offline publications are racking up huge losses. Many are going bankrupt. More
Content is expensive
July 03, 2000: Content may be king, but royalty is expensive to maintain, especially on the Internet. More
