For years now web experts have been utilizing page views as the holy grail of web content metrics. If you find yourself still glued to your page view numbers, to the detriment of other traffic indicators, then my guess is you’re stuck in a page view rut, and your traffic isn’t growing as fast as you’d like.

Years ago when the Internet was still in its infancy the only measure of web page success was a page counter, which measured the number of “hits” a web page received. Although a person was able to keep track of the growth of page hits from day to day, there was no way of determining how many of those hits were from the same computer, where they were coming from, how long the viewer stayed on the page, or even where the “hit” came from.

Luckily today’s statistic options allow for far more details about views, but if you find yourself spending too much time crunching numbers you may be missing out on many more significant indicators of web success that could help you grow your site faster. Here are a few ways in which you can get out of the page view rut and view your web pages through a more holistic lens.

1. RSS and Newsletter Subscriptions. A subscription list is a valuable online business tool that should be nurtured. If you don’t have a compelling reason for visitors to sign up for a newsletter or an RSS feed, you may be missing out on a valuable customer resource. Additionally, tracking the number of subscribes and unsubscribes over a period of time can indicate patterns that may be useful in the future.

   As an example, if your site sells retail products that cater to seasonal products, you may see a dip in new subscribers, or even a drop in current subscribers during non-peak months. You may be able to creatively help maintain these numbers, however, by providing relevant information that encourages ideas instead of sales! Maybe instead of sending a newsletter in January about a sale on new surfboards, you instead send out a checklist of items that customers will want to consider to plan their next surfboarding vacation.

   Your customers may not need to buy a surf board today, but by providing them with relevant information they do need today (a planning checklist for their summer vacation) your assistance will be rewarded with a growing subscription list, better retention of current subscribers, and future purchases when the sun is up, and the waves are big!

2. Throw your Page Rank Data out the Window SEO experts have been making thousands pushing search engine optimizations as an end-all be-all tool for higher Page Ranks and search results. Although I agree that SEO is an important element in overall web site success, I don’t believe that Page Rank alone determines the success of a web site. This is especially true for small business sites.Page Rank is utilized to determine the order in which your pages are displayed in search results for given key words, but make no mistake – money speaks volumes as well. Now I’m not saying that a page cannot get a high rank for key words and phrases without paying for advertising. But for competitive key words, the chances are slim that any amount of white hat SEO work will get you to the top of the list very quickly.

   The point is, don’t let Page Rank determine the success of your web page. There are many other metrics and benchmarks you should be utilizing to determine how successful your site is – page rank is only one, very small, part of that success.

3. User Content Contributions. Never under estimate the power of social media and interactive web content. Comments and other interactions by users on your site are a positive indicator that users are not only reading, but are interested enough to respond to your content. Not only that, information from discussions and comments on your site can help with future developments.If you currently have a blog site, look through and find the top five articles with the most comments. Are there any common elements in these articles? Similar theme? Same topic? Discussing the same product? It is these ideas, concepts, products, services, that are generating the most interest, so how can you expand upon them? Maybe more of your content should include these concepts and ideas? Maybe you need to expand your services to incorporate ideas generated through these comments?

   If you spend the time to create a complex discussion board covering products and services, make sure to also take the time to listen to what those users have to say. You may not be able to monitor everything, but you can certainly get a feel for where their interests are, and use that information to create even more successful content, or tools, or information.

4. Use your Statistics Wisely. I once worked for a large organization that was trying to incorporate their web business in an environment that had tried to avoid the Internet world for years. Every week I’d sit through meeting after meeting listening to corporate executives complaining that page views had gone down on such-and-such a page, and then cheering about another page on the site that had extraordinarily high page views. No one ever bothered to try to track where the views were coming from, or how many pages were viewed before a user left the site, or any other significant indicators of site success.As far as these executives were concerned, web success was determined by unique visitors and page views – if they went up, everyone was happy, but if they went down, it was the end of the world. What they didn’t realize was the complex nature with which these numbers are generated. New web browsers, software that blocked cookies and created anonymous usage statistics all meant that these numbers needed to be looked upon as one indicator of success, not “the” indicator.

   Patterns over time can be useful to show trends in viewership from period to period, but for truly useful information web pages should be analyzed by more than just numbers. As indicated above, comments need to be reviewed, how long users remain on the site should be analyzed, as well as where traffic is coming from and even, which links on the site lead the user somewhere else.

   In addition, these efforts should be based on several benchmarks, or goals for the site. Benchmarks help determine a direction for the site, and develop goals that indicate success or failure of individual elements of overall site failure or success. It is not enough to have one goal of “Improve traffic to our website” and expect to be able to measure real success accurately.

   Once individuals success goals and benchmarks are determined, then you will need to determine which metrics best reflect success or failure of those goals. For example, if one of your goals is to try to improve the length of time that visitors stay on your website, from the moment they click into your site until the moment they leave the site, measurement metrics might include Length of Stay, and Traffic Path. The length of stay metric will help determine whether visitors are staying longer on your site over a period of time, while the traffic path metric allows you to find problem pages where visitors may be dropping off at higher rates than on other pages.

Ultimately it will be a set of metrics that relate to specific goals, or benchmarks, that will in combination, determine the success or failure of your site. And let’s not forget one of the most significant indicators – sales! Sales or conversions are also a good indicator, however remember that all other goals and benchmarks for your site can help you troubleshoot low sales numbers, and help you make changes that will improve your bottom line.