Web performance indicators for a television program website

Many broadcasters rely on a single indicator when determining the popularity of a television show, the audience. This is generally the indicator taken into account when deciding whether or not to continue broadcasting a show. On the Internet, certain individuals often focus on traffic levels, but there a many other performance indicators that can help you get to know your visitors even better.

Indeed, new tools such as Google Analytics and a number of other free, or almost free, tools can calculate hundreds of performance indicators. Beware however of going to extremes: an over-abundance of figures tends to hinder the decision-making process. How many times have you viewed the statistics report of a website and haven’t been able to find the information you really want? This is a classic case of infobesity which is easily cured by defining indicators that are relevant to your business model.

Below are a few examples of indicators suited to a television program website. These indicators are not necessarily appropriate in all situations, but they are generally very useful in assessing the health of a website.

Visitor behavior

Often the most viewed and the easiest to interpret, visitor behavior statistics illustrate a website’s general trend. These statistics include the number of visitors, the portion of “repeat visits” and the bounce rate.

In terms of visits, it is often helpful to isolate the time slots before, after and during a program in order to assess how this affects the performance of your website. A high level of "repeat visitors" during a same season is usually a good sign as it demonstrates an interest in the site content.

Commitment

Commitment indicators have been gaining ground over the past few years, namely due to the improved performance of tools. Frequent visits are indeed a good sign but are your visitors really interested in the website’s content? To measure commitment, indicators such as the time spent on the site, the time elapsed between visitors (recency), loyalty and interaction are evaluated.

One of the most common mistakes is to rely mainly on averages. For example, many analyze the average time spent on a website, relying solely on the website average (e.g. 8.5 minutes). This information is far less pertinent than knowing that 80% of visitors spend less than 1 minute on the website, 10% 1 to 20 minutes and 10% more than 21 minutes. The time elapsed between visits is very useful in evaluating whether a weekly program generates subsequent visits or if the website is viewed more or less often than the program. Interaction is one of the most significant factors in terms of commitment as it demonstrates that the user shows a genuine interest in performing an action on the website such as submitting a comment, playing a game, subscribing to an RSS feed, etc.

Content performance

These indicators demonstrate whether or not the content truly appeals to your visitors, thus providing information as to what they want. Two key indicators are the proportion of visitors having viewed a particular content and the time spent on an interactive content.

The proportion of visitors having viewed a specific content is a good indicator of the interest for the content in question. For example, if eight video capsules are made available and two of them are viewed more often, it would be wise to take example on those two videos when creating new capsules for your website. Similarly, if more time is spent on a particular game, your visitors probably find that game more appealing than the others, which is information that can be used to enhance a future version of your website.

Traffic source performance

Google, Twitter, Facebook, broadcaster site, e-mails and direct visits to name a few; these are all examples of sources that generate visits to a television program website. However, they do not necessarily generate the same quality of visits.

By knowing which sources generate the best visits, it is possible to increase the focus on those sources in order to further enhance website performance. For example, knowing that the broadcaster site generates longer visits and a greater level of interactivity may be beneficial when negotiating additional space on their website.

Visitor satisfaction

Even when all indicators are used effectively, the best information is often that provided by the visitors themselves through a survey.

Such surveys are conducted online, directly on the website, and provide information on visitor satisfaction based on certain criteria such as type, gender, age, etc., which is useful in ensuring that the website corresponds to the targeted audience. It is also extremely relevant to combine visitor satisfaction with the quantitative indicators presented above. In this manner, conclusions can be cross-referenced: "80% of visitors who played this game are satisfied vs. 40% for all other visitors.”

The same can be said for technological challenges

The “democratization” of web performance measurement tools, as well as the availability of reference documents to developers, has allowed a number of organizations to obtain statistics that are more reliable than in the past. These days however, it is even easier to make costly implementation errors as knowledge of visitors’ needs will be inadequate and the necessary actions will not be taken. It is therefore crucial that the tools be set up accordingly and challenged if necessary before embarking on a project to monitor website performance.