2.6. Aggregate Metrics for Web and E-Business Sites
Since the Web became a widely used vehicle to support all sorts of applications, including e-business, the need arose to devise metrics to measure a site's efficiency in attaining its goals. Many metrics have been used to assess the success of sites in terms of popularity and/or revenue generated.
| Category | Function | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Common | Login | Login to the site. |
| Register | Register as a new user. | |
| Search | Search site database. | |
| Select | View one of the results of a search. | |
| Browse | Follow links within the site. | |
| Retail | Add Item | Add item to shopping cart. |
| Remove Item | Remove item from shopping cart. | |
| See Shopping Cart | Check contents and value of shopping cart. | |
| Create Registry | Create a gift registry. | |
| Add to Registry | Add item to gift registry. | |
| Check Status | Check status of previous order. | |
| Pay | Pay for items in shopping cart. | |
| Trading | Open Account | Open account for trading. |
| Get Quotes | Get delayed or real-time quotes. | |
| Get Report | Get performance report on companies. | |
| View Chart | View charts of closing prices. | |
| View Indexes | View values of indexes (e.g., DJI, SP500). | |
| Trade | Buy/sell/exchange stocks or mutual funds. | |
| Create Portfolio | Create stock/funds portfolio. | |
| Add to Portfolio | Add stocks/funds to portfolio. | |
| Delete from Portfolio | Delete stock/fund from portfolio. | |
| Asset Planning | Plan allocation of assets. | |
| Information | Download | Download software/report/music. |
| Subscribe | Subscribe to regular downloads. | |
| Listen | Listen to real-time audio (e.g., lecture). | |
| Watch | Watch real-time movie. |
Hits/sec measures the number of requests for objects served in each second by a website. Note that a page is usually composed of one HTML file and several other embedded image files that are automatically requested from the Web server when a user requests the HTML document. So, hits/sec counts not just the HTML pages but all embedded objects in a page as separate requests, which does not give a precise idea of the number of times a specific page, with its advertisement banners, was viewed.
Page Views/Day reflects the number of individual pages served per day. A company paying for a banner ad to be posted on a page may be interested in the number of times its ad is being seen. Very popular sites can display a few hundred million page views per day [3].
Click-throughs measures the percentage of users that not only view an online ad but also click on it to get to the Web page behind it. This metric is oriented more toward assessing the impact of online ads. However, this measure can be misleading [3]. If the message in the banner ad is too general, it may draw a larger number of clicks than a more specific message. However, users who respond to the more specific message are more likely to be interested in the product being advertised than those who react to the more general message.
Unique Visitors indicates how many different people visited a website during a certain period of time. Many times it is more important to know how many different people visited your site than the total number of visits received during a certain period.
Revenue Throughput is a business-oriented metric that measures the number of dollars/sec derived from sales from an e-commerce site [5]. This measure implicitly represents customer and site behavior. A customer who is happy with the quality of service (e.g., response time) of an e-business site will shop at the Web store, and the revenue throughput will increase.
Potential Loss Throughput is another business-oriented metric that measures the amount of money in customers' shopping carts that is not converted into sales because the customer leaves the site due to poor performance or other reasons [5].