The following is a proposal for stats functionality in WCN 2.0. It was written for the team of developers I am working with to create WCN 2.0. However, I would like to have your feedback, if you are a comics creator who uses — or is thinking about using — webcomicsnation.com to publish your webcomics. It should go without saying that Modern Tales, girlamatic, serializer, Graphic Smash, and all other sites powered by WCN 2.0 will share this functionality.

Notes:

Rather than focus on GUI issues, I am attempting in this document just to come up with all the different kinds of reports the creators (and readers!) would like to be able to see. Some of these reports are obviously subsets of others. So there’s a report for “All Unique Visitors to My Site” and another one for “All Unique Visitors to a Particular Comic on My Site” — and the way to handle that in the UI is probably to provide the larger report, with dropdowns or whatever to allow filtering. Stuff like that. In some places, it’s obvious how this filtering would result in different reports based on one general report, so that’s reflected below. In other cases, there are probably things I’ve listed as separate reports below which could actually just be different “views” of each other. I will need some help from someone with a more disciplined understanding of data structures to figure that out.

I am shooting for the most ambitious possible version of the stats in this document. It is likely that availability of some of these reports can and should be pushed out beyond initial launch. We should work together to decide which are “L” (launch) “D” (delayed) and “Future release”. I don’t trust myself to do this categorization alone, because I’d just list everything as “L”. Because I’m like that.

All reports should come with charts and graphs where appropriate. All data should be downloadable in Excel or .csv format.

The phrase “branded content category” means a webcomic series, blog, a wiki, a forum, or other content area owned by the user which has a name, and multiple content items within it (individual webcomic installments, blog posts, etc). In some cases, forums, wikis, blogs, etc., belong to a particular webcomic series, and should not be counted separately as content categories — pageviews to the “Superguy” blog and forum and wiki should be credited to the webcomic series “Superguy” itself. In others — a blog that is launched on its own, not as a supplement to a webcomic, but as a standalone branded kind of blog — they are counted as separate branded content categories.

The word “venue” means the location where a comic is viewed. This might be the actual website itself, or an instance of a widget on some outside webpage, or within a full-content RSS reader like SharpReader, or on a cellphone, on Xbox Live, etc.

Unique Visitor Reports

General Unique Visitors: A chart. User can view the number individual humans who have visited his/her suite of pages on wcn, or his/her branded standalone site powered by wcn, during a specified period of time. The default appearance is a graph showing unique visitors by day for a week. User can change both of the time values (view uniques by hour for a day, view uniques by week for a month, or uniques by day for a month, or uniques by month for a year, or uniques by week for a year, or uniques by day for a year, etc.) using a simple drop-down filtering mechanism. Can show all uniques across the entire site (default) or configured by user to show uniques by content category (webcomic series, blog, etc.) or by content item (individual webcomic installment, blog post, etc). Can be filtered by venue (web or widget or mobile).

Registered Unique Users: this report shows the avatars of the top {n} number of registered wcn users who have visited this particular user’s wcn pages per {hour, week, month, year}, sorted by the number of visits per user. Note that these visitors can hide themselves from this report by choosing high privacy settings in their own profiles. If they do so, a placeholder question mark graphic will be shown where that user’s info would have normally appeared. Can be filtered by venue (web or widget or mobile).

Unique Visitors per Referring Link: this is a table, not a chart. Shows top outside links to the users’ pages sorted by incoming unique visitors (includes links back which pop a new window). Can be filtered to show only links to individual branded content categories, or individual content items. Can be aggregated by domain of outside link (so all links from any pages on a particular outside domain are aggregated into one number). Can be filtered to exclude or include WCN2 network pages (like the directory, the homepage, etc).

Unique Users by Merchandise Item: shows the number of unique users who look at and/or purchase one or more of the creator’s merchandise items per {hour, week, month, year}. Can be filtered to show all uniques who look at any item, or only those who purchased an item, or only those who looked at but didn’t purchase. Can show hard numbers or a percentage (vs. total uniques) at user’s option. Can be filtered by venue (web or widget or mobile)

Entry Pages Per Unique: this is a table, not a chart. Shows the top {n} entry pages to the user’s site, sorted by incoming unique visitors. Can be filtered by venue (web or widget or mobile)

Time Spent Per Unique: this is a chart. Shows the average time spent on the user’s site per unique visitor, by {hour, day, week, month, year}. I have some thoughts about how to acquire this data. But it won’t be easy. Can be filtered by venue (web or widget or mobile)

Pageviews Per Unique: this is a chart. Shows the average number of pageviews on the user’s site per unique visitor, by {hour, day, week, month, year}. Can be filtered by venue (web or widget or mobile)

Earnings Per Unique: this is a chart. Shows the average revenue share earnings per unique visitor by {hour, day, week, month, year}. Can be filtered by venue (web or widget or mobile)

Reader Participation Index: this shows the unique visitors who drop some sort of content (webcomic or blog comment, wiki edit, forum post, etc) into the creator’s site by {hour, day, week, month, year}. Can be expressed as a hard number or as a percentage (vs. all unique visitors). Helps creator gauge reader involvement. Default shows data across all content categories, but can be filtered by individual content category (webcomic series, blog, etc) — probably not by individual content item, though (probably useless at that level).

Unique Users Downloading Files: shows the hard number, or percentage of unique users who download one or more of the creator’s downloadable comics per {hour, week, month, year}, sorted by most popular downloadable content item to least.

Top Content Items by Unique: shows the top {n} individual content items (webcomic installment, blog post) by unique visitor.

Uniques by Geography: maybe a Google Maps mashup showing where, geographically, one’s users cluster. Possibly tied into a database of upcoming comic conventions so that creators can plan their convention appearances based on their popularity in particular regions.

Pageview Reports

General Pageview Report: shows pageviews by {hour, day, week, month, year}. Can be filtered by content category or by individual content item. Can be filtered by venue (web or widget or mobile). Can be filtered by individual content category, or individual content item.

Top Content Items by Pageview: shows the top {n} individual content items (webcomic, blog post) by pageviews.

Advertising Reports

Banner Impressions Report: shows banner impressions by {hour, day, week, month, year}. Can be filtered by content category or by individual content item. Can be filtered by venue (web or widget or mobile).

Banner Clickthroughs Report: shows banner clickthroughs by {hour, day, week, month, year}. Can be filtered by advertiser and by banner. Can be filtered by content category or individual content item. Can be filtered by venue (web or widget or mobile).

Merchandise Sales Report: shows total number of merchandise items sold per {hour, day, week, month, year}. Can be broken out by merchandise type (books, t-shirts, etc) or by individual merchandise item. Can be filtered by venue (web or widget or mobile)

Merchandise Item Pageviews: this is a table, not a chart. Shows how many people are looking at the top {n} merchandise items the creator is offering for sale, per {hour, day, week, month, year}. Can be filtered by venue (web or widget or mobile)

Referring Links

Note that the most important referring link report (uniques by referring link) is listed above under the “Unique Visitors” heading.

Referring Links by Age: shows the number of visits from any referring link resulting in at least {n} visits, sorted by newest links to oldest. Link age is determined by the first incoming visitor from that link. Number of visits can be expressed as a hard number of as a percentage of all visits, or as a percentage of all visits coming from referring links. Creator can change the {n} variable.

Earnings Reports

Advertising Revenue Share Report: shows revenue share by {hour, day, week, month, year}. Can be filtered by content category (allowing creator with multiple webcomic series, for example, to know which one he/she should be spending more time on, if money is a goal). Can be filtered by venue (allowing creator to see the difference between his/her website earnings vs. earnings from widgets vs. earnings from mobile, etc).

Merchandise Earnings Report: shows dollar amounts and/or unit sales of merchandise sales by {hour, day, week, month, year}. Can be broken out by merchandise type (books, t-shirts, etc) or by individual merchandise item.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 14th, 2007 at 3:14 pm and is filed under Technology, WCN News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.