Metrics – NASA.gov: Behind the Page

Spent part of this week checking the spread of Monday’s Chandra story across the web, both from www.NASA.gov and social media. Though the social media channels are increasing in importance, especially in spreading the word on the first day, the web site still takes the preponderance of traffic, particularly the follow up in the days after the event.

Not surprisingly, attention generated by Facebook drops very quickly as the story moves down NASA’s Facebook page. Plays of the video fall off on both the site and our YouTube channel, but traffic remains higher on the site, paralleled by the drop we see on the site.

Notice that the reach of Twitter can increase as days go by, especially as people start retweeting others’ retweets.

The point of social media is not explicitly to generate traffic to the site, but it’s worth noting that a very small but growing fraction of people are coming to the site that way.

Trying to ascertain patterns and identify the strengths of each channel will be a key element as we start formulating ideas for the next version of NASA.gov in the weeks to come. As always, suggestions welcome.

(FB: Facebook; YT: YouTube. Like you didn’t know.)

Chandra FindsYoungest Nearby Black Hole (Nov. 15, 2010)

	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu
Chandra main page downloads	91,462	15,289	4,425	(1)
Feature story downloads	35,812	39,497	12,405	(1)
Shares via Add This	10	7	0	0
Video on www.nasa.gov	70,648	50,027	18,117	10,975
Video on NASA TV YT	1,631	18,765		12,286 (2)
Press release on www.nasa.gov	40,613	N / A	N / A	N / A
Press release via Gov Delivery	263,693	N / A	N / A	N / A
Press release via listserve	14,329	N / A	N / A	N / A
Impressions on FB page	82,004	48,413	6,464	7,221
Likes on FB page	581	56	14	16
Comments on FB	102	8	4	2
FB likes on NASA.gov				2,000 (4)
Reach of retweets (people)	27,190	29,107	23,635	42,213 (3)
Retweets from NASA.gov				210 (4)
Referrals to www.NASA.gov from FB	32,843	9,516	3,131	(1)
Referrals to www.NASA.gov from Twitter	8,125	4,741	2,693	(1)
Total visits to www.NASA.gov	1.85 million	868,088	599,233	(1)
Live press conference streams on www.nasa.gov	18,000	N / A	N / A	N / A
Press conference replays on NTV YT				767 (4)

(1) Data not available until Saturday due to the size of logfiles to be processed

(2) Total for Wednesday and Thursday

(3) Includes retweets from other sites, e.g., NationalGeographic

(4) Cumulative for the week

If you’ve visited www.nasa.gov often enough, you’ve been asked to take a survey about the site. It asks you about the content, whether you find the site relevant and other things, including some demographic questions. I’ve you’re one of the people who have answered, thank you. The survey provides one of the key metrics that lets us know how we’re doing. (Here’s an explanation of how the ACSI works, for the technically inclined.)

So how are we doing? Pretty well it seems. Our scores for September and for the third quarter of 2010 were the highest we’ve ever gotten. We continue to outpace web sites generally and most other federal-government sites, and we remain fairly close to some of the most widely used commercial sites. Our September score of 83 wasn’t too far behind Netflix and Amazon, and it was well ahead of some others. (Here’s a chart for comparison.)

And, heck yeah, we were higher than Google last month. I can only recall one other month that we were even; Google is usually the highest rated site of all that use this particular service. Most likely it’s a one-month aberration, and the more interesting question is what caused them to drop so precipitately. But you’ll have to ask them.

The real value of this survey is in comparing our ratings over time. In that respect, we’re doing very well. Over any standard time period (months, quarters, years) our customer-satisfaction rating continues to climb. We’re convinced that’s because we pay attention to what you say, whether it’s via e-mail to us, indirectly through your click paths across the site or through the survey itself.

We take what learn and use it to improve the site by developing prototypes and taking them to usability testing, then incorporating the testing results into our development. We’ve done three major overhauls of the site (1997, 2003 and 2007) and with each new iteration our scores have climbed. We also continue to make minor changes within the existing design, like deploying our new video player last spring and changes to how we display top news stories last month.

So thank you again for all your feedback. We’ll keep paying attention.

Tag: Metrics

Hokey smokes, Bullwinkle! NASA.gov Beat Google!