Does the pageview have a future? Or will the online world look to unique visitors, time-spent or attention (what’s that?) to determine the success of a Web site. The Globe & Mail’s Mathew Ingram wades into the conversation with a column looking at the pageview’s future. Personally, the exercise of measuring a Web site’s traffic is like looking at a big bowl of fruit. There’s lot of choices but people will pick the one that appeals to them the most. In the online world, this usually means picking the measurement tool that’s the most flattering. Whether that resonates with advertisers is another question entirely.
I think the most important metric for a website is repeat users- those who have come across your site or blog once and saw enough value to come back. Cookies should provide a pretty good way to measure that- now all that’s needed is for advertisers to abandon the old Web 1.0 model of eyeballs are everything.
At the end of the day, what really matters is the “who” and “how” of those eyeballs. No one simple metric can satisfy all questions about a site’s traffic. It’s a science to itself.