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Different Metrics for Different Sites
Author: Mike Hartman
July 24, 2007
Nielsen//Netratings recently announced that they will start ranking pages by the time spent on the site over page views as the key metric. I understand that total page views aren’t the perfect metric, but I would also argue the spending more time on every site isn’t necessarily a good thing.
For example, Google drops from third to fifth in popularity when ranked by time spent on the site instead of page views. I think that’s good news for Google. I don’t want to spend more time on Google. I want to use Google to find what I’m looking for so I can get on with it. Or what about an online quoting process for an insurance company? Isn’t it desirable to move through that process as quickly as possible so you can purchase your policy and get on with your day? Sure, if you’re running a social networking or gaming site, you want to engage your users for as long as you can but if you’re weather.com or traffic.com you are serving your users better by getting them the information they want and getting them on their way asap.
On the other hand, The Nielsen Group (Jakob Nielsen’s consulting group not affiliated with Nielsen//Netratings) is conducting eye-tracking research that seems to contradict Nielsen//Netrating’s philosophy. The study suggests that cleaner layout and design allow people to navigate a site faster while retaining more information. To me this suggests that spending a lot of time on a site could be a sign of poor design and/or usability and not necessarily of a more engaging site.
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