Five tips for measuring the success of online offers

1. always in view: Editorial goal

To measure overall editorial performance, set an editorial target in the dashboard of your web analytics tool. This target figure is compared with the current actual value in real time. A target can be, for example, a certain reach of all articles per day or month. Last articles written, publication times, average reading time and bounce rates provide further information about the performance optimization of the editorial output.

2. and the winner is ...: Article performance

Monitor your top articles and most popular sections. The social sharing of articles is included in the scoring for the top articles. If an article contains other elements such as video or image galleries in addition to pure text, it is interesting to see which ones the user interacts with particularly well. Theoretically, a dashboard can also show which editor or author has written the most successful articles.

3. flyby or regular: Visitor structure

Observe how the number of your unique users develops, which end devices and which media offerings they use (desktop, mobile site, app, e-paper). Distinguish between users by group: have they just popped in for a quick look at an article (flybys), are they occasional users (Occasionals) or are they regular readers (Regulars)? If your portal requires a log-in, an overview of registered and non-registered users is also useful. All values should be assigned a benchmark, for example a target or average value.

4. successful acquisition: marketing and sales

If you also offer print editions, e-papers or individual articles for purchase or as a subscription in addition to your online content, you should also monitor this in the dashboard. This includes, for example, the development of subscriptions, the overview of conversion sources and the visualization of the CPO. If you use paywalls, key figures such as best-selling articles can be measured.

5 Time is money: C-Level

If managing directors or editors-in-chief are responsible for several portals or magazines, they can use the dashboard to get a quick overview of the performance of the various media. Comparative figures can be, for example, the reach or top topics of the day. As a general rule: reduce the dashboard for C-level to the most necessary key figures. The higher the person is in the company hierarchy, the more reduced the dashboard needs to be.Author: Shahab HosseinyCEO of the performance marketing agency MSO Digital