We relaunched the redesigned Newstalk.ie last Monday. This was an 8 week project at ICAN, starting with planning, sketching and refinement through wireframes.

I thought I’d share some of the details regarding results measurement.

A summary of the agreed brief: to make audio a more primary component of the site, improve the user experience around audio, improve social integration and user interactions. We we also tasked with interlinking content more effectively (through promoting ‘related content’, aggregration, tagging and recategorisation), while at the same time reducing process overheads for generating content.

The Newstalk website has over 12,500 pieces of indexed content and 2,500+ audio pieces (and growing hourly), so the relaunch involved a fair amount of planning around content migration.

Newstalk homepage: wireframe stage

But what are the metrics for the success of a project like this and how do you measure the results?

Primary measurement metrics

1. Dwell time: Certain areas (such as the media player and listen live) will be measured by play and dwell time; the longer the better
2. Playback metrics: Number of listens and playbacks to integrated podcasts & the listen back files available for most shows
3. Unique Users & Page Impressions: Newstalk.ie runs display campaigns and sponsorships, so these standard metrics are still important

Secondary measurement metrics

1. Interactions: Comments, shares & mentions are a valuable metric here also, as a reflection of the unique value of the content on the website
2. Time spent & number of pages viewed: This is a complicated metric (as it’s dangerous to assume that increases here are always a positive), but depending on the pages, it’s of value. For example increased time spent in the news section, where audio clips are appended to news items, combined with a number of pages viewed, can reasonably be understood as a positive result for the news guys.
3. Repeat visits: Not every visitor is loyal (and big once-off stories can blow this metric out) but repeat visitors means at least some degree of loyalty.
4. Ease of use for users & internal adoption: This is a more qualitative metric. Newstalk.ie is a busy news environment and requires process integration; try telling a news producer that they now have another completely separate process for publishing news audio to a website; if these teams find it easier to push content to the site, then Newstalk.ie is going to grow. So we’ll be measuring this also.

Newstalk homepage: live stage

The last time we relaunched Newstalk.ie, we more than doubled UUPM and PIPM, and increased the online listenership 500%. A low benchmark existed before though. So we’ll see the results as they come through in the coming weeks and months.

As with any site of course, Newstalk.ie will grow organically and will face new challenges in the coming weeks, months and years. ‘Newstalk TV’ will be the next integration, coming to Newstalk.ie very soon. Having the proverbial ‘face for radio’ will no longer be an excuse…

Torlogh O'Boyle - Technical Director

Torlogh joined Ican as Head of Production in 2002 and was appointed as Technical Director in July 2010. He likes making things. His favourite humming noise is hummmmmm, no, no, wait, it's more of a hmmmmm.