Because this is the minimum viable blog, I look at my traffic and make changes to further provide value to my readers.

To do this, I use Dave McClure’s AARRR framework.  This is an easy-to-deal-with set of metrics, and it helps me understand what to do next.  It is also quite fun to say.

AARRR

Acquisition – I’ve gotten traffic from social media like twitter and social aggregators like ycombinator news.  I will get more Google traffic when there’s more content here, so I’m not worried about that yet.  Everything is going swimmingly on the acquisition side, so let’s work on some of the other areas this week.

Metric: 1,513 views since launch – will ultimately look at numbers for the week

I would love to look at “doesn’t abandon” and time on site from various channels, but I can’t get those with the wordpress.com analytics.

Activation – Because I don’t have ‘time on site’ from Google Analytics, this is hard.

I do, however, have views by page.  And very few people who visited Grattisfaction looked at more than one page.

I’m told a ‘splash pattern’ of these ratios around landing pages are fairly common.  The ratio stayed roughly N hits – .1N hits – .05N – .025N hits the whole time over all of the days.  This makes sense.

I attribute this to how difficult it is to find other pages on Grattisfaction from looking at a post view.  (This is the downside of a minimalist layout.)  I saw several click-thrus to the bit.ly links on my Twitter feed, which suggests that readers will click on links in that area if presented.

Comments are my other metric here.  I’ve seen 3 comments over 1315 views on the Zynga post.  For every 438 views, I’m getting one comment, which seems a little high.

Metric: 438.333 Guests per Comment

(This may be a terrible metric, leading me away from the path of leanstartup righteousness – let me know in the comments.)

Retention

RSS Subscribers are the most obvious metric here.  Only one (yes, count ‘em, one) person has subscribed so far.  But I’m optimistic.

Let’s not worry about retention/subscription percentage – at this point, I wouldn’t subscribe to this blog either.  When I subscriber to a blog, I look for a lot of good content, suggesting that the writer will continue to write really good content in the future.  Grattisfaction just isn’t there yet.  No worries – from small, iterative acorns large, awesome trees grow.

Metric – RSS Subscribers/Visitors – 1 subscriber / 1516 vistors

Referral

While I got more than 50 shares on Twitter and 5 on facebook, I have no idea how many are from this website.

That’s because there’s not (which is a nicer way of saying I haven’t given) a way for users to share.  This obviously needs to change.

Metric: Referrals from Blog – None (no way to.)

Revenue

As this blog is about meeting people and becoming a bigger part of the start-up community, ‘revenue’ is not just revenue (although none will be turned down.)  Revenue for me is meeting new people and building good relationships in the community.

So far, I haven’t met any new people because of Grattisfaction, but I’m optimistic.

Metric: Emails Received – None

Iterations

Every cycle, I’ll make three or four iterations on the blog.

This Cycle:

Referral – Install Share button on every post.  This will allow readers to share, which will enable me to start understanding what makes people share.  I’m very optimistic about this.

Because WordPress.com doesn’t allow you to use plug-ins, my Share button is not the one I want (ShareThis).  We’ll fix this when we go to wordpress.org.  This Share Button will work well enough for now.

Activation – Add a ‘Top Posts’ where my Twitter feed is, pushing the Twitter feed down.  This should help readers find other posts they like.

Comments - Italicized call-out asking for comments after every Share button.  Let’s see if this helps.

Better Analytics – I really need to switch to the wordpress.org to do this right.  I’ll work understanding that.  This is longer term – maybe 4-6 weeks.

Please comment – feedback is the only way Grattisfaction will be a better blog.  (I might become a better writer, but that will take longer.  And that requires your feedback too.)

Are you a metrics expert?  Is there a better way to use AARRR on a blog?  Let me know and leave a comment…

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