Seven Metrics to Measure
Your Articles

Last updated: Dec 6th, 2024

Many nonprofits have website articles aimed to educate, inform and inspire. But how can we ensure they're effectively fulfilling their purpose? It’s not enough for these articles to just exist; they need to effectively serve their intended function.  It’s all about determining and effectively using the right metrics

This piece is the second in a two-part series. The first, Turning Your Website Metrics Into a Measurement Plan, is focused on using metrics to understand and improve your site over time. It emphasizes that merely collecting metrics isn’t a good use of your nonprofit’s time unless they're used to make decisions.

But of course, you can’t make a measurement plan without data. Here, we delve into seven practical metrics you can track, primarily with Google Analytics, to gauge the performance of your informational pages. These metrics serve as indirect indicators of page effectiveness, and are especially useful when compared across time or different pages. Let's explore what each means and how they can be used within your nonprofit.

1. Page Visits

An initial metric to consider is Page Visits, indicating the level of attention a page is attracting.  It could be drawing attention from within your site, like your search engine, or through external sources like public search engines or social media. It's an essential metric, and while a high number of visits is certainly positive, this doesn’t guarantee the content is useful to your audience.

2. Time on Page

Time on Page indicates user engagement, measured in seconds spent on a page. For content-rich pages, you'd expect visitors to spend significant time reading. A duration of 30 seconds, a minute, or more suggests users are engaging with the content. Comparing times across pages or from one time period to another can help you to determine what’s drawing your visitors in to read a page in more detail. 

On the other hand, more time isn’t better in a general way. The pages that show up with the highest time on page are likely to be ones that didn’t have much traffic, and some of your visitors just left the browser window open. If your tools will allow it, looking at the percent of visitors who spent more than 30 seconds, or an equivalent measure, is more useful.

3. Bounce Rate

Related to the Time on Page, the Bounce Rate defines the percentage of your visitors who spend less than 10 seconds on the page before leaving your site (the Bounce Rate calculation was updated — to become more useful— in the new Google Analytics 4). A high bounce rate on an article might indicate the content isn’t meeting visitors’ initial expectations.

 A high bounce rate isn’t necessarily bad for all pages — for instance, for a Contact Us page, it might mean your constituents can easily find your phone number, which is what they came to find. But for an article with a fair amount of content, a high bounce rate implies a number of visitors aren’t on the right page to answer their question, or that they don’t perceive your information is going to be able to help them.

4. Scroll Depth

Scroll Depth tracks how far down the page, on average, visitors scroll —50%, 75% or 100% of the way down the page? If more visitors are exploring your page thoroughly, that's a good sign they're finding the information engaging. Implementing scroll depth tracking requires a little bit of configuration in Google Analytics but is well worth the effort.

5. Incoming Links

External sites linking to your page signify the credibility and usefulness of your content. A high number of incoming links not only boosts SEO but signals your content's value to a broader audience. You can find this information in your Google Search Console, a valuable tool for understanding how your content performs in search engines.

6. Conversion Events

If your content aims to prompt action (e.g. form downloads, newsletter sign-ups or event registrations), tracking conversions is key.You can set up conversion “Events” in Google Analytics, to allow you to for instance, see which articles are driving the most eNewsletter sign-ups. Events need to be custom setup in Google Analytics; this article from Simplified Impact talks through to how to set up Events. 

7. Direct Feedback Tools

Direct visitor feedback, such as a "Was this page helpful?" with a thumbs up or down can give insights into how well each article resonates with readers.This will need to be added as additional functionality to most sites, but it can be worth the bang-for-the-buck to measure your visitors’ actual perception of each page. 

Pulling It All Together

So you’ve defined what metrics make sense for you. Now what? The challenge is to use them to make informed decisions, as per Part 1 of this series, Turning Your Website Metrics Into a Measurement Plan. Regularly review your data, compare metrics across pages, and look for trends. Learn from what works and apply those insights to improve other pages.

You don’t need to track every possible metric. Focus on those most aligned with your goals. Start small, with a manageable number of pages, and expand your efforts as you find what works for your site. By adopting a structured approach to analyzing content's performance, you can ensure your articles do more than just occupy digital space—that they engage, inform, and inspire your audience.