According to data by Tony Haile of Chartbeat, I’ve only got 15 seconds to capture your attention … so I guess I better make it quick. His data shows that people aren’t reading content on the web the way we think they are, and the whole measurement system might be broken. Instead of tracking article views, we should focus on reading time and page engagement.
As a person who makes a living off of people reading, clicking, and sharing content, I was initially terrified. This couldn’t possibly be true — otherwise everything I know about content is pretty much a lie! To quell my panic, I took a little closer look at the data — it seemed to be mostly from media companies.
In an email exchange, Chartbeat confirmed my suspicions. “The sample we used for our research is a random sample of the clients for whom we have permission to aggregate and anonymize their data,” said Lauryn Bennett, Head of Brand at Chartbeat. “There are blog posts and the like included in the articles but most are traditional news/media posts, as we work with mostly media sites. Also, the term “articles” doesn’t include homepages or landing pages; they’re the news/content/media posts, pages, stories.”
55% of Visitors Spend Fewer Than 15 Seconds on Your Website. Should You Care?
