Hi everyone -- a recent article in the Communications magazine of the ACM discussed establishing success metrics for different types of Web sites. The argument was that for different types of sites you have different goals, and thus need different metrics. Although the article was written about Web sites in general, this is something I've been thinking about for museum sites.
For those of you who are responsible for evaluating the success of your sites, do you use different metrics for the 'success' of different parts of your sites? For example, do you differentiate between 'brochure' parts of your site, where the visitor may just want to come in, find the information they want (hours of operation, for eg.) and leave, and those parts of your sites such as virtual exhibits, where you hope that visitors stay longer? Another area where you'd potentially have different metrics would be in any blogs or any other interactive areas your museum has on the site. I'm thinking that perhaps this would be an interesting topic to examine in a Metrics & Evaluagion SIG session at the next MCN conference. Any comments? Sheila Carey Audience and Programs Analyst CHIN BTW, the article I mentioned is "Web Site Success Metrics: Addressing the Duality of Goals", by France B?langer, Weiguo Fan, L. Christian Schaupp, Anjala Krishen, Jeannine Everhart, David Poteet, and Kent Nakamoto. Communications of the ACM, Dec. 2006, Vol 49, Number 12."
