R.I.P Page Views

For months, our staff has discussed how RSS feeds and readers like FeedBurner would kill the page view metric. We all talked about page impressions was a really useless way to set online advertising rates. We also speculated that a lot of blogs get the short end of the stick in ratings. Now, Nielsen/NetRatings has finally "killed" the page view. The ranking service will now track "Total minutes" as the new measurement  (see yesterday's NYTimes article "Nielsen Revises Its Gauge of Web Page Rankings").

Most nonprofits could probably care less about Nielsen/NetRatings rankings. When's the last time you went to Alexa and discovered your organization was in the top 100 sites? Most nonprofits aren't even a blip on Nielsen/NetRatings. And, you probably don't have advertising on your website (or shouldn't!). But, the topic does bring up questions about how organizations view their website metrics.

I like page views as a metric (I still lecture clients on "hits"... ugh!). True, it's a useless stats for blogs and video sites and a bloated stat for sites such as Facebook (read Richard MacManus' article from Read/WriteWeb). But, it's still a nice clean metric. "Total minutes" has issues as well.  Does time equal engagement? OK, you have dense content that everyone just loves to read or lots of fun widgets (I can play Pac Man on some blogs for hours and not read very much word), so do these sites take a huge leap in ratings? Are people really engaged? Does the credo hold true that the longer the stay, the more likely a user interacts with your organization (e.g. donate, sign up for mail list, take a survey, etc)? if so, then it's time to increase your rich media offerings. 

Check your logs and examine the time on site for the last several months. Stack them against campaign launches or newsletter releases. Stack them against page views. But, don't give up on the page view just yet. If you run your "total minutes" stats over the course of the year, you may be very disappointed or be stuck with numbers you wouldn't dare take into your next meeting.