Key metrics & what they can tell us about our content

With such a large see of data, it is easy to drown. This guide features a few of my favorite metrics to use when analyzing my content audits. My hope is that this guide will become a favorite source for you.

The content analysis is the heart and soul of the Content Strategy, ensuring it is well-informed by giving us insight into where we need to focus our efforts. The goal is to gather data to perform a thorough analysis of all the content in an experience, helping us determine if digital content is relevant, both to customer needs and to the goals of the business.

What data do I need to analyze my content?

This is a great question! And it's one that I am most often asked. Data comes from many different tools and sources, depending on the types of data you're gathering. I like to aggregate both qualitative and quantitative data sources to shape my analysis.

What is qualitative data?

Qualitative data describes qualities or characteristics. It is usually collected by conducting research using questionnaires, conducting interviews, observations, and frequently appears in narrative form. For example, it could be notes taken during a live interview with a customer, or responses from an open-ended questionnaire.

What is quantitative data?

Quantitative data describes measurable quantities or amounts, and is reported using numbers, units, percentages, etc. Quantitative data comes in many types and forms.

Voice of the Customer (VoC)

I prefer to start with the voice of the customer, a process used to capture the requirements/feedback from the user. It gives us insights into the customer sentiment (what customers are perceiving and saying) about the experience I'm going to audit.

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)

CSAT is a key performance indicator for any CX organization. It is a measurement that tracks how satisfied customers are with your products and/or services by asking users, "How would you rate your overall satisfaction with the [goods/service] you received?" Respondents use the following 1 to 5 scale.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

NPS is a customer's brand loyalty measurement taken from a survey asking how likely they are to recommend your product or service to others on a scale of 0-10. The results are then tallied up by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters.

Customer Effort Score (CES)

A customer experience survey metric measuring how much effort a customer expends while using the product or service, interact with you, get an issue resolved, or a question answered, etc. CES enables you to account for the ease of customer interaction and resolution during a task.

1. Nearly impossible

2. Difficult

3. Neither difficult nor easy

4. Easy

5. Effortless

Other surveys

Any survey asking users to rate something such as the site look and feel, customer service experience, etc.

I don't rely solely on VoC data. Although it tells you what the customers perceive, it doesn't tell you why. This is where engagement data comes in.

Engagement metrics/data

Engagement data is quantitative metrics used to track the frequency of user interaction (what users are actually doing?) with your digital content.

Key metrics & what they can tell us about our content

Number of sessions

Tells us the number of times a user visits the website within a given timeframe, such as day, week, or month.

Pages viewed

The number of times a particular page is viewed.

Impressions

Tells us the number of times an element on a web page is viewed.

Click through rate

Is the content driving digital engagement the way we hope it to be?

Bounce rate

How many people are leaving the page without clicking through? This can tell me if people are finding the content relevant to their intent.

Conversion rate

Tells us the percentage of visitors to the website that complete a desired goal (a conversion) out of the total number of visitors

Task success

Task success rate is calculated based on the average of all users (in a given time period) for all tasks.

Clicks

The number of clicks an element receives. Tells us how much an element is being clicked on.

Pages viewed per session

A high number might tell me if the user was struggling to find the information they needed within the content.

Average time on site/page

How long it is taking a user to complete their task? This tells me if they’re confused or struggling to understand the promotions or options available to them.

Median return count

Tells me how many times on average did customers return to this page.

Scroll rate

Tells us what percentage of the traffic scrolled down to see this content

Abandoned cart

Tells us what percentage customers who had items in their cart, but didn't complete the purchase

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) data

SEO data is data related to traffic, impressions, page rank, and other topics directly linked to SEO.

Organic search/organic traffic

Tells us if users are searching organically for your content, or is most of the traffic coming from campaigns or paid search?

Google's "People also ask"

Tells us the top questions users are asking when they have intent. This search element can tell content strategist quite a lot about what users want to know when it comes to your content.

Google's "Quick answers"

Are highly visible text snippets that give the best response to the users' searched question, linking to the source of the answer.

Referring domain

Tells us where the users are coming from. A website that links out to a target website (aka linked domain) and may direct traffic to that site through one or more of its outbound links.

Summarize key findings from the audit and elevate the summary by providing high-level recommendations you can refine later.

1. What are the common issues that bubbled up?

2. What patterns do you see surfacing?

3. How did it impact the customer?

4. Is there a theme?

Now you are armed to create a content strategy brief backed by data! Make sure to reference your findings as you provide specific recommendations on where to make improvement the experience.

Next: Content Strategy Brief