The Basics of Measuring Conversion Rates

Comparing Google Analytics to Momently Analytics

tailoring analytics for bloggers

                                                                                                                         

February 5, 2018

Jim Morrison

Tailoring Analytics for Blogs

     There are a variety of analytics tools available for social media websites.  During the past week, Google Analytics has been linked to this blog.  Analytics plays an important role for bloggers in identifying not only the blog traffic, but other actions, like time spent on each page, bounce rate, and the relative value each page contributes to the overall goal of the Blog.  For Bloggers, it’s also important to know the number of daily visitors and monthly visitors who are visiting your site.  How many visitors are new, and how many are repeat visitors.  Knowing what pages of the blog are most visited can help you know where to further develop or eliminate pages.  Analytics can also help identify things like email signups and the productivity of forms that visitors are completing.  And, analytics can identify if the call-to-action buttons are appropriately placed and working properly (Engel, 2018).

     There are many analytics tools that can assist in evaluating a blog’s productivity and effectiveness in accomplishing its goals and purpose.  Aside from Google Analytics, there are a number of analytics tools available that can aid in maximizing productivity.  Several of the free analytics tools that are recommended for blogs include, Google Analytics, Momently, Clicky, Piwik, KYA, Sumo Content Analytics, and Sumo Heat Maps 7 Great Analytics Tools For Bloggers (Most Are Free)(Engel, 2018).

                                                   Tips for Becoming a Better Blogger

(Click on the link to view tips for becoming a Better Blogger)(Sauer, 2017)

     Google Analytics is one of the most highly recognized social media analytics tools in the social media world.   However, new tools and plugins are being introduced into the marketplace every day.  One of the recent entries into the world of blogging analytics is Momently.  This tool has been available for a little over a year and is advertised as a plugin for Word Press and designed for publishers who want to have a deeper understanding of their readers and subscribers.  The purpose of the tool is to help users make better editorial decisions (Momently, 2017). 

Google Analytics (GA) focuses on the measurement of visitor behavior by event, session or the page click.  If a visitor clicks on a page and then moves to a different page on the site, the time on the first page is recorded as ‘time’ on the page.  However, what transpires between the two page-loads is questionable.  Was the viewer actually reading or did he or she move to a different task like reading an email.  It could be the visitor never made it to the next page of the blog.  Momently, however, is designed to identify what the viewer is doing in-between the clicks and movements from one page to the next.  This tool claims to identify whether or not the reader is actually engaged and reading the blog post.  It records the visitor’s viewing of the page by identifying if he or she was scrolling, page-up and or page-down.  Further, if the viewer was idle for more than thirty-seconds, the tool would consider visitor idle and not record the time on the page (Momently, 2017).

Comparing Google Analytics to Momently

Google Analytics

     Google Analytics captures data every time a page is loaded by a visitor.  Until the next page is clicked on, GA does not capture any information.  Time on a page is identified as a ‘session’ by GA.  A session duration is determined by the time of the first click on the previous page.  It is important to note, at the time this research was completed, GA did not record the time spent on the very last page prior to ending the session.

In a session where the user looks only at one page of the blog, the session is recorded as 0.  GA has no indicator as to when the user left the very last session

Momently

Momently begins tracking visits every several seconds, identifying what the viewer is doing between clicks.  This type of tracking enables M to accurately determine how long a visitor is actually engaging with the publisher’s content.

M accurately identifies how long a visitor spent on the last page of a blog post and his or her navigational actions.  M tracks how the viewer is consuming the content, not only how long he or she was on a specific page (Momently,2 2017).

The M homepage is designed to allow the publisher of the blog to quickly view the top performing pages, total viewers, average viewing time, and total page views on an easy-to-view graphic chart.  All pages that are identified by M as being valid are within five-seconds of the time the page is viewed.

The M tool breaks down readers automatically by engaged time and geographical region the visitors originated from.  It also shows the scroll depth on various devices along with click-through of inbound, outbound and download data. In addition, it shows a macro view of traffic channels and referrers.

Momently Analytics Graphs

(Click to view detailed Graphs)

Metrics and their Actions

Momently’s primary metric focuses on page views.  It is noted that this feature is not without some flaws.  The main objective is to give the blogger an indication of how the page is resonating with the viewer.  The main advantage to using M is that it directly links traffic data to the referrer.  An example of this linked traffic data would be if a visitor both directly to your website and also via Instagram, each click would be tracked independently and the referral website would be identified.  M claims to accurately cross-analyze visitor movement through various website channels with greater accuracy than Google Analytics.

Momently markets its ability to breakdown and filter for time comparison periods such things as combinations of traffic properties, visitor behavior, and content elements.

Beyond page views, M provides data regarding where the visitor navigated after reading the content.  For example, the metric shows how far the viewer scrolled down the page and how long attention was paid to a specific article. M goes beyond the click to show how engaged the viewer was to the article. 

Why is scroll important?  If a visitor scrolls down 20 percent of the page, it is safe to assume the content did not meet their needs or the headline was misleading.  However, if a viewer scrolls down ninety-percent of the page, it can be assumed the content was engaging (Momently, 2017).  This particular metric is not offered by Google does in the initial download.  However, it is available as a plugin for measuring page scrolling.  M offers this feature as part of the overall download of its tool.

In summary, it appears Momently is more tailored to analytics associated with blogging and has features most bloggers would want to help them better understand and engage with their readers.

Summarizing the Benefits of Momently

1.      Measures engagement of time

2.      Facilitates comparison of authors, sections, and posts to identify what works and what doesn’t work

3.      Help you gain an understanding of referrers that send quality visitors

4.      Identify reader’s interests and their scrolling behaviors

5.      Compares, evaluates and ranks content with metrics

6.      Filters dates, sections and author views with a custom-tailored dashboard for real-time data collection

7.      Allow the user to sort by rising and declining pages to identify opportunities and threats

8.      Identify where visitors are clicking through or bouncing off your site (Wordpress.org, 2018).

How to Get the Most From Your Blogging Analytics (Sitereportcard)

(Click on the Link above to get insights on how to maximize your Blogging Analytics)

                                                      

References

 Wordpress. (2016, September 2). The Best Free Tools for Website and Blogging Analytics on a Budget. Retrieved from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/773845148441303686/

 Engel, K. (2018, January 2). 7 Great Analytics Tools For Bloggers (Most Are Free). Retrieved from https://bloggingwizard.com/analytics-tools-for-bloggers/

 Sauer, J. (2017). Google Analytics for Bloggers Presentation. Retrieved from https://www.jeffalytics.com/google-analytics-for-bloggers-presentation/

  Sitereportcard. (2017, September 6). How to Get the Most From Your Blogging Analytics. Retrieved from https://www.sitereportcard.com/742/get-blogging-analytics/ 

Momently. (2017, September 16). Meet the new Momently. Retrieved from https://momently.com/blog/meet-the-new-momently/

 Momently. (2017, September 16). Engaged Time: What is It and How is It Different from Session Duration. Retrieved from https://momently.com/blog/how-is-engaged-time-different-from-time-on-page-and-session-duration/

 Momently. (2017). Drive peak performance for your digital content. Retrieved from file:///C:/Users/Owner/Downloads/productoverview_momently.pdf

 Wordpress.org. (2018). Realtime Content Analytics for Your Blog. Retrieved from https://pt.wordpress.org/plugins/momently/