Measurement: Tracking the life of content

What good is a measurement tool that doesn't track the success of content at the article/content level? Probably not much. Think about it, how many times have you navigated to a website and then just sat there and stared at it? Right. Never. Because you're not there just to look at the pretty website, you're there to get a piece of information, to make a transaction, or to be entertained. Those are the things that have to be tracked.

Just looking at hits on the sitewide scale makes no sense -- it's too big a pot of stew to understand. The content, though, tells you a lot more about what they want, need, and are interested in -- and you can do it over time because content never dies (or at least it shouldn't), while the container (design) changes pretty rapidly.

The trick is getting this done. Google Analytics appears to be emerging as a tool of choice for many in higher ed. Makes sense -- it's free, it's easy to understand, and it works. Pretty much a winning combination every time. Some of the off-the-shelf tools are expensive, ridiculously hard to understand, and often bog down systems because of their massive log file demands. [Buzz] Not a good combination.

The problem with Analytics is that it tracks at the page level, not necessarily at the article/content level, which is pretty limiting. The bigger tools do handle such tracking, but refer to the whole expensive (which makes them not an option for many shops), hard to understand (which makes them not an option for shops without a programmer or stats guru), and big log file (which makes them not an option for shops without adequate/dedicated IT support) issue.

So what's a pro to do? This is actually another one of those volley posts, because I don't have an answer. Seriously, what are you doing?

Comments

[Michael Stoner]

I think simple is better than complex. It's desirable to track the impact of individual pieces of content, but it's usually not practical for our clients to do so--for the reasons that you suggest: The sheer complexity of reports, lack of staff, lots of other things to do. I think you can learn a lot by looking at pages (for example, the landing page for a targeted campaign of some kind and tracking click-throughs from there). And you can track actions from certain kinds of content. I think more and more, we'll see a focus on specific campaigns, simply because they're more trackable.

[Charlie]

Michael -

That's a great point -- thanks for chiming in. Campaign-specific, action-oriented pages are great ways to track effectiveness and maintain focus on outcomes.