I’m glad people that people listen to are finally talking about moving on from using page views as the be-all metric for a website’s success. Now, page views can still work if it is an apple-to-apple comparison. But as Fred mentioned, when a website or a web service drastically changes the architecture of a service (like Yahoo Mail), you just cannot use the same comparison metrics anymore. Vistors are good ones, but are they unique and what metrics tool are you using to measure them (comscore, urchin, google, compete, omniture, etc)? They all gather information a little bit differently, and many rely on cookies, which are really starting to die out (a topic for another day).

Heck, in my world, people are still using the word “hits” on occassion. Scary.

MySpace really opened up the world of “put content anywhere” in the form of widgets. So now, if you have content, you can place it virtually anywhere, in small blocks for people to look at, and in some cases actually interact with. With that in mind, anything on your current website should, in some form, be portable. Tag everything, upload pictures to flickr and picassa, videos should be distributed everywhere (revver, google, youtube, etc). Content that you update frequently, should also go into a blog and be tagged appropriately. Create your own widgets and get them out on your MySpace pages, get content into Facebook. These sites are big and powerful, so use them.

Rich media banner advertising hasn’t even touched the surface of its newfound (and probably live-saving) ability to create mini versions of your own website. The ability to create “touches” with your content, whether it be for informative purposes or advertising is powerful. Placing them in widgets and interactive banners lets you get your information out where the people are without interrupting them too much.

In 2007, let’s start counting touches, they are going to be a very powerful thing.

Technorati : pageviews, touches