Yes, over the last couple of years there has been a move away from publisher and media sites using the total number of page views to assess the total value of their visitors and so to sell advertising space. This move has been prompted by changes in technology and the way we use the internet with the advent of web 2.0. These changes mean that page views aren’t an accurate way of measuring engagement with a site or its advertising potential. The result is that the number of page views per visitor doesn’t measure engagement as well as it did when most pages were static.
With the increase of video on sites like YouTube and mainstream publishers’ sites, a visitor can be engaged on a site for some time, but this is not indicated by number of page views. Likewise a site visitor can be interacting with a “rich internet application” (RIA) such as a game or other Flash or similar application, and this isn’t reflected in number of page views. Finally, on social network sites, new status updates may be done dynamically through AJAX programming techniques without the page being refreshed.
These changes are the reason why there has been a lot of discussion of other methods of measuring engagement with a site. Duration of visit is a more accurate way of measuring overall engagement with a site, although advertising space can be sold on this basis alone.
Here are two more in-depth articles about measuring online customer engagement:
• Avinash Kaushik on engagement
• Eric Petersen’s method of measuring engagement
Dr Dave Chaffey is director and lead consultant at Market Insights Limited, an independent digital marketing consultancy, and author of internet marketing books including eMarketing eXcellence: Planning and Optimising Your Digital Marketing, co-written with PR Smith.
You can read more of Dave's Insights on digital marketing on his Right Touching Digital Marketing blog
E-mail your digital marketing questions and problems to Dave at digital@themarketer.co.uk
Read more>>>
to magazine
