chiyo - 4:41 am on May 27, 2002 (gmt 0)

Its the old distinction between process and outcome variables. Its good to see that WMW posts lately are focusing more on the quality of the hit rather than the amount of hits. There are some really insightful posts here too.

Process variables are things like hits, unqiue visitors, page views, Outcome variables are what counts - and depends on your web strategy. Ours are subscriptions to lists and email newsletters, enquiries from email forms, and closed sales.

For a personal contribution 3 of our niche sites that have been around for 3 to 8 years. - One gets 3,000 unique vistors a day, the others get 300 to 600. But all are meeting our outcome variable targets. For eample the one that gets 300 a day is in a very niche market, but gets around 5 new newsletter subscriptions a day, and we have closed sales on 4 major contracts from web referrals in the last 6 months.

The measure of a success of a Web project depends on how well it meets the goals set by your strategy!