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Shel Holtz
Communicating at the Intersection of Business and Technology
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John Wall’s tutorial on the growing irrelevance of page views

I’ve been suggesting for a while to clients and workshop audiences that page views are increasingly irrelevant. Steve Rubel argues that so-called Web 2.0 applications built in Flash, AJAX, and other technologies will allow users to see and do everything they want from within a single page, rendering page views as a form of measurement inaccurate. In a comment to Steve’s post, I suggested RSS feeds also diminish the page view’s value. I breeze through several hundred pages ever morning, sometimes twice a day, ignoring sites with no new content and rarely visiting the sites whose content does interest me—I read it directly from the news reader that never touches the web page.

The uptake of RSS has been slow, mostly because it was too geeky for most people to get started. But most browsers have subscription and feed management built in, and Internet Explorer 7 has its RSS integration down cold.

Advertisers, of course, depend on page views to assess the value of a site as a venue for their ads, so as the page view fades from the scene, companies will have to find other means of reaching their audiences. Some people like the idea of ads in the feed. That might work, but ultimately, more creative marketing that moves away from intrusive advertising will be more effective.

In any case, explaining RSS’s impact on the death throes of page views isn’t easy, but John Wall has done a great job with a very short screencast that makes the concept crystal clear. (John is the host of The M Show and author of the new (and terrific) Ronin Marketer blog.) Using the features of IE7, he walks you through the subscription process and how it dramatically reduces the number of actual web pages you’ll visit.

Comments
  • 1.Thanks for the kind words, now we just need to find a way to use this to our advantage...

    John Wall | December 2006 | Straight outta Boston

  • 2.Shel,

    The consensus towards the lessening (I Wouldnt say 'irrelevance' of pageviews) has been growing for some time now.

    The issue is not new technologies (like RSS feeds, which is still not hitting mainstream), its the issue of "What is Engagement?" Indeed, pageviews is another version of the infamous dot-com "Mindshare".

    We will not only have to measure pageviews on the webpage or how many use the RSS feeds, but also "how many folks used our widget?", "how often and where?".

    Fundamentally, if the Web is supposed to shift from the old days of HTML Text to Applications (distributed application when using Widgets), then we are moving away from pageviews to what we really want (but find difficult to define): "Business Actions" or "Engagement Metrics".

    Avinash Kauskik, who has some of the best thoughts on Analytics, has talked about moving away from "Page Centricity" and I on toying with a "Tabula Rosa" Approach to Analytics.

    Daniel R | December 2006 | San Francisco, CA

  • 3.Thanks, Daniel. Yeah, I think what you're talking about is very much in line with Rubel's point. But I do think RSS will experience a surge in use that will have an equal impact now that it's part of the dmonant browser. And note that Microsoft has done away with the "RSS" label, opting instead to just call them Web feeds, which removes one obstacle to adoption.

    Shel Holtz | December 2006 | Concord, CA

  • 4.Yesterday was consumed by 3 items: an email campaign, an unbelievable story involving our corporate holiday gift (when it’s done I will tell this tale, for now all I can say is that I want to jam a coffee cup so far up someone’s (*&@#$...

  • 5.I can see your point of view for article-based websites. But in regards to user interactive sites, such as myspace, no one uses RSS. You might want to exclude video/image heavy social networks from your verdict. :)

    Tim | December 2006

  • 6.That is a valid point. But I think one thing holds, people are more interested when there is new content on the page. Maybe there's a market for generating feeds for myspace?

    John Wall | December 2006 | Straight outta Boston

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