Feedback on Use of Analytics

 

 

We asked editors of Indiana newspapers about their experience with analytics, and here's what they had to say.

 

These are the questions.

 

• To what extent do you track the traffic of your website?

• What analytics services have you used?

• If you don’t use analytics, why not?

• Are there any limitations you have in tracking your analytics data?

• Do you have a goal for your traffic?

• If you use analytics service, what are the main areas you look at?

• How does using analytics affect the way you produce (market and distribute) Web content?

• Who keeps track of the analytics? Was an employee hired to keep track of analytics?  

 

These are the answers.

 

Daily News, Greensburg, Indiana

 

• Tracking: Monthly page views, unique visitors, total visits and the number of visits per unique visitor on a monthly basis.

 

• Service: Google Analytics.  Prior to that we used Adobe Omniture.

 

• Focus: Page views, unique visitors, total visits and the number of visits per unique visitor.

 

• Use: Information is captured on a monthly basis and distributed to the various departments within our organization.  Based on their individual departmental, goals adjustments are made.  For example, pricing may change for a particular sponsorship (i.e. weather) or a particular type of content (local news, obits, etc.) may be increased or decreased. Since we sell impressions to our advertisers, we have to monitor page views and sponsorships closely to ensure all customers receive more than what they expect, without going overboard.

 

• Staffing: Analytics data is currently captured by the IT department and then distributed to the various departments within our organization who then act on the information captured.  While currently a single employee processes the report monthly, that is not intentional and more out of familiarity than anything else, since others are also running various other reports at month end.

 

 

The Courier-Times, New Castle, Indiana

 

• Tracking: We post on our website, but have not capitalized on any of its interactive features. Though I see invitations for readers to comment on our website, I have yet to see ONE comment. Advertising has not yet caught on on our website, and is very low. Our Facebook presence, however, has grown by leaps and bounds through the last year by page-sharing other sites' posts. Unfortunately, Facebook stopped the page share feature about a month ago. I fear that it will ultimately bring down the readership of our Facebook page, as well. Our publisher, Bob Hansen, reported that the number of hits on our website and our Facebook page are comparable.

 

• Service: Only the services available through our website provider and Facebook.

 

• Why?  We are not at liberty to hire outside consulting firms.

 

• Goals: We'd like to find a way to capitalize more from our online presence through increased readership, interaction, and sponsored posts and advertising.  

 

• Use: By knowing what types of posts increase reader interaction, we cater to those types of stories and try to provide more.

 

• Staffing: The editorial staff keeps track of the analytics.

 

 

The Times, Munster, Indiana

 

• Tracking: We use analytics daily.  We track pageviews, users, visits, pages per visit, device type, time on site, bounce rate, pages per visitor, site version, etc.

 

• Service: Omniture previously and now Google Analytics and Chartbeat

 

• Limitations:  Tracking true unique visitors.  We can track unique visitors by device but since the visitors could be using multiple devices and multiple users could be using the same device, it’s impossible to get an accurate number of true unique individuals.

 

• Goals: Our current goal is to increase engagement and pages per visit.  We also have pageview goals and always strive to increase number of pages consumed month over month.

 

• Focus: We track pageviews, unique visitors and visits.  We also look at bounce rate, times on site, referral sources and pages per visit.

• Use: We can use analytics to identify and track trends and increase engagement on our site.  We can find out which types of content are driving pageviews, visitors and engagement and prominently display, push to social media and recirculate the content.  We can also use this information to help us determine where our traffic is coming from to help us refine our site design and content on certain devices or certain sections sections.

 

• Staffing: We have an online team that tracks overall analytics.  Our newsrooms also track this as well, but more on a real time basis so they can quickly spot trends and react accordingly.

 

 

Elkhart  (Indiana) Truth

 

• Tracking: We have daily, weekly and monthly reports that we analyze, as well as Chartbeat for real-time analytics.

 

• Service: Google Analytics, Chartbeat

 

• Limitations: I wish I could segment our audiences a little bit more to know which high-impact stories resonate with which readers. It’s hard to compare the high-traffic stories (crime, courts, fires, crashes) with the high-impact enterprise stories.

 

• Goals: Grow every month.

 

• Focus: We primarily look at PVs because it’s an easy way to track growth, though we also look at things like recirculation and engagement time. I expect we’ll begin caring about bounce rate a lot more than we do right now.

 

• Use: It affects it dramatically, particularly around social and search distribution. In fact, much of the content we craft for social and search audiences is informed by our understanding of analytics.

 

• Staffing:  Everyone who goes through our newsroom receives a crash course in basic analytics, and some folks receive more training on top of that. The managing editor and assistant managing editors pay most attention to analytics and teach others.

 

 

 Palladium-Item, Richmond, Indiana

 

• Tracking: Analytics are very important to us. We’re constantly watching the traffic to our website and using it to inform coverage decisions in our newsroom.

 

• Service: We use several systems, including Omniture and Chartbeat for our website, the built-in tools for Twitter and Facebook, and Hootsuite.

 

• Limitations: I don’t believe we have any real limits to our analytics.

 

• Goals: We don’t have any specific goals for our analytics, other than to see them grow.
   

• Focus: Page views, unique visitors, average time spent on site, average visit depth and Chartbeat’s engaged time.

 

• Use: To help us make decisions about what kinds of stories we should cover and whether follow-up stories are warranted on stories we write.

 

• Staffing: Everyone in the newsroom is responsible for tracking analytics. Reporters have their own customized dashboards that they are to check at least once a day while the editor keeps a close eye on Chartbeat and Omniture numbers off and on throughout the day.