Guidance performance indicator - Web metrics for information driven web sites

For the evaluation of web sites a multitude of metrics are available. Apart from general statistical measures, success metrics reflect the degree to which a web site achieves its defined objectives. Particularly metrics for e-commerce sites based on transaction analysis are commonly available and well understood. In contrast to transaction based sites, the success of web sites geared toward information delivery is harder to quantify since there is no direct feedback of user intent. User feedback is only directly available on transactional web sites. We introduce a metric to measure the success of an information driven web site in meeting its objective to deliver the desired information in a timely and usable fashion. We propose to assign a value to each click based on the type of transition, duration and semantic distance. These values are then combined into a scoring model describing the success of a web site in meeting its objectives. The resulting metric is introduced as the GPI and its applicability shown on a large corporate web site.