Ask News.YC: How do you measure website growth?

[ahsonwardak]

My hunch is the answer is: "it depends". How do you measure the growth of your site? Is it based on page views, subscribed paying customers, registered customers, ad clicks? I know the obvious question may be revenue growth, but what about before the revenue starts to roll in? What metric is the most important for a certain situation?

I'd love to hear a whole spectrum of thoughts.

[thomasswift]

Great question. I'd also like to hear what people say.

I use Google Analytics for site stats, it's pretty informative once you understand where everything is.

[alaskamiller → thomasswift]

i hate gAnal. it doesn't significantly slow down page loads but it does slow it down. i like how my current host has a version of urchin installed on the backend. i also bought copies of mint so that i can keep track of stats faster and better.

[thomasswift → alaskamiller]

true. nice name for it :)

I had urchin back on an old host, i liked the way it showed referring pages.

[alaskamiller]

metrics is a big field. my personal list:

1) raw pageviews 2) account signups 3) consistent account activity 4) inbound links 5) revenue