What information should we share with our newsrooms? Editors should study Google Analytics weekly and prepare a monthly report to share with the staff. The report should at least include month-over-month page views and unique visitors, plus some notes on the content that is most popular and the content that is not. This will help you focus your resources.
• Including a Top 10 list of stories for the month will help hone your Web strategy and could be a fun way to motivate your newsroom to focus more on traffic-driving content.
• You can pluck specific numbers from Google Analytics Overview sections, or you can build and save custom reports to automatically generate data to share.
• Google offers a “Quick Start Guide for Custom Reporting” here:
You can export your custom report into Excel or set up your own report.
What trends should we expect to see as we implement Web Cube? We believe that when you begin to post consistent updates throughout the day and publish regular photo galleries and polls to your homepage, you will see traffic growth of at least 25 percent within six months.
What then? Will traffic level off? After six months, refining your Web strategy to publish the specific content visitors want will help maintain steady growth. Growth will vary depending on how much your newsroom has been focused on the Web prior to Web Cube and your market’s potential.
Those newsrooms fully up to speed with consistent posts, photo galleries and polls can continue to drive growth with video, social networking (Facebook and Twitter) and building on reader involvement through features such as interactive maps.
When are the best times of the day to post fresh content? Analysis shows that key Web traffic is highest between 8 and 9 a.m., again around noon and then between 5 and 6 p.m.
You can study the hourly habits of your visitors in Google Analytics under: Visitors: “Visitor Trending: Visits” and selecting a date range. Then click the Clock icon in the upper right to see an hourly breakdown. Publish fresh content during those times when visitors are most likely to be checking in. Doing so will build reader expectations and, ultimately, traffic.
What information should we share with our newsrooms? Editors should study Google Analytics weekly and prepare a monthly report to share with the staff. The report should at least include month-over-month page views and unique visitors, plus some notes on the content that is most popular and the content that is not. This will help you focus your resources.
• Including a Top 10 list of stories for the month will help hone your Web strategy and could be a fun way to motivate your newsroom to focus more on traffic-driving content.
• You can pluck specific numbers from Google Analytics Overview sections, or you can build and save custom reports to automatically generate data to share.
• Google offers a “Quick Start Guide for Custom Reporting” here:
You can export your custom report into Excel or set up your own report.
What trends should we expect to see as we implement Web Cube? We believe that when you begin to post consistent updates throughout the day and publish regular photo galleries and polls to your homepage, you will see traffic growth of at least 25 percent within six months.
What then? Will traffic level off? After six months, refining your Web strategy to publish the specific content visitors want will help maintain steady growth. Growth will vary depending on how much your newsroom has been focused on the Web prior to Web Cube and your market’s potential.
Those newsrooms fully up to speed with consistent posts, photo galleries and polls can continue to drive growth with video, social networking (Facebook and Twitter) and building on reader involvement through features such as interactive maps.
When are the best times of the day to post fresh content? Analysis shows that key Web traffic is highest between 8 and 9 a.m., again around noon and then between 5 and 6 p.m.
You can study the hourly habits of your visitors in Google Analytics under: Visitors: “Visitor Trending: Visits” and selecting a date range. Then click the Clock icon in the upper right to see an hourly breakdown. Publish fresh content during those times when visitors are most likely to be checking in. Doing so will build reader expectations and, ultimately, traffic.
