Monitoring online performance brings to mind two clichés: ‘never mind the quality, feel the width’ and ‘if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it’. As even the best statistics are measures of volume, the human tendency – to take the easiest path, by measuring what’s easiest to measure – is to monitor the width. Or in traffic terms, the volume.
That’s not wrong per se – you need to know which web pages are (and aren’t) being looked at, which email newsletters triggered the most clickthroughs – but it’s not the whole story. Like any kind of statistic, online traffic figures require interpretation.
