IDG Contributor Network: The myth of the 'golden metric'

Monitoring web traffic data has been a central strategy component for businesses since it became apparent that shifting operations from print to digital was a necessity, not a luxury.

But the volume of data and the complexity of analysing that data often leaves the liberal arts majors among us scratching their heads. What do these numbers mean? Which ones are more important? How will this data tell me if my content is performing well?

In his book, The Signal and the Noise, statistician and writer Nate Silver said we live in an age where the volume of data available to us has vastly outpaced our knowledge of what to do with it. In no industry is this more evident than web publishing. Between pageviews, reader engagement, clicks, shares and numerous other metrics, publishers today have a lot of data to choose from when measuring success.

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