Updated 9/22/09.
The Online Communities: Metrics and Reporting research study was initiated in late July of 2009, and ran until the second week of August 2009. The research project was conducted by the Online Community Research Network, and the intention of the study was to get a broad look at what online community metrics organizations are tracking, how organizations determine and report on the ongoing value of their online community initiatives, and the reporting and metrics tools that help companies assess this.

We received approximately 175 responses. Participants represent a healthy swath of the types of organizations participating in online community culture. Participating industry categories include: software companies, hardware companies, consumer goods non-profit organizations, independent consultants and media companies, amongst others.

Report Highlights
Several key issues pertaining to online community and social media metrics surfaced during this report, including:

• In general, organizations need to do a more thorough job of defining their business objectives for online community engagement, assessing ways to measure progress towards these objectives, reaching beyond their native platform metrics capabilities, and finding ways to measure the more qualitative components of community member engagement.
• The Role of the Community Manager is increasingly important to developing and refining business process, and measuring performance in these new “social spaces.”
• There is a growing need for community metric standards that are platform and vendor-independent.

Determining What to Measure
From Question 14: How does your organization determine what is important to measure and report?

SUMMARY:

• 20% (34) We stick with what the platform can provide
• 61% (100) We work from a strategy based on business goals and find solution to help us measure what we need
• 19% (31) We try to measure everything, will develop more of a strategy later

TAKEAWAY:
Respondents are primarily shaping metrics strategies based on business goals (61%), even if their platform doesn’t support gathering or tracking desired metrics. Platform metrics are generally speaking, not comprehensive or extensible enough to create a meaningful dashboard to see overall community health, get an accurate visualization of the community’s social graph, and to understand the ongoing insight created by and the sentiments of the community population. The risk in relying only on data that a platform can provide (20% of the respondents) is that the data sets aren’t comprehensive or contextual to organization’s needs. “Measuring everything” (19% of respondents) can overwhelm the community team and stakeholders, and is unlikely to yield meaningful performance data or insight without some rigor in the analysis.
















Metrics Currently Being Tracked
From Question 16: What do you currently measure?

SUMMARY:
The top 5 items that online communities measure for tracking and reporting are as follows:

• 152 Responses - Unique Visitors
• 150 Responses - New Member Registrations
• 143 Responses - Page Views
• 126 Responses - Visitors
• 116 Responses - Message Posts


The top 5 items that online communities don’t measure, but want to are as follows:

• 90 Responses - Member Satisfaction
• 90 Responses - Influencer / Evangelism
• 84 Responses - Member Life Cycle
• 83 Responses - Member Loyalty
• 73 Responses - Referrals to Community


TAKEAWAY:
The top 5 items that online communities currently measure for tracking and reporting are the same for both profit and non-profit organizations and include Unique Visitors, New Member Registrations, Page Views, Visitors and Message Posts.

Non-profit organizations concentrate on measuring Podcasts & Video Links and Member Satisfaction, more often than other organizations, whereas commercial organizations place more attention on measuring Retention / Attrition, Member Loyalty, Member Blog Posts and Conversion than non-profit organizations.

As organization’s community strategies mature, the trend to primarily report on basic web metrics (page views, registrations) will be replaced by metrics that speak to the health of the community, the strength of members’ networks, the quality and type of member participation, and more robust measurements of member engagement. The data suggest that we are on the cusp of the evolution from “basic” community metrics to more robust and contextual reporting.

Currently Measuring - Profit and Non Profit


A larger version of the graph can be downloaded here:
http://www.onlinecommunityreport.com/images/metrics_tracked_2009_graph.png



Top 3 Key Performance Indicators

From Question 19: What are the 3 most important community key performance indicators in the reports you send to management?

SUMMARY:

• 32% (74) User Activity / Engagement
• 21% (49) Membership Count [New Registrations, Active]
• 18% (42) Number of Posts / Comments
• 5% (12) Member Satisfaction / Loyalty
• 4% (10) Number of Questions Answered
• 4% (10) Sales Revenue - Up Sell, Cross Sell, Renewals
• 4% (8) Leeds / Referrals Generated
• 3% (6) Number of Downloads
• 3% (6) Number of Influencers / Evangelists
• 2% (5) Visitor Retention
• 2% (5) Number of Conversions
• 1% (2) Donations Received
  
• 1% (2) Visitor Geographic Dispersal


TAKEAWAY:
Almost a third of respondents indicated that User Activity / Engagement (32%) is one of the most important key performance indicators in the reports that they sent to management. Within the User Activity / Engagement category, the following 3 key performance indicators were the most commonly reported:


• 33 Number of Page Views / Clicks
• 22 Number of Site Visits
• 19 Number of Unique Visits


The other two key performance indicators that many respondents input into management reports are Membership Count (21%) (including new membership and total membership count) and the Number of Posts / Comments (18%) received on their site.

User Activity / Engagement is the number one item to track for both profit and non-profit organizations. Within this category the specific key performance indicators were dispersed similarly, with the profit based organizations having a slightly higher percentage ratio on key performances such as the Number of Threads reported and General Participation. Non-profit organizations, on the other hand, have a slightly higher percentage ratio on reporting metrics such as Number of Returning Visitors and the Number of Site Visits.

Another common response from profit based organizations was related to reporting key performances such as Sales Revenue and the Number of Conversions whereas non-profit organizations had a higher percentage response rate for reporting the amount of Donations Received.















USER ACTIVITY / ENGAGEMENT 34% (BROKEN OUT):

















Access to the Full Report
For members of the Online Community Research Network, the report is included as a benefit of your annual subscription. If you are interested in joining the OCRN, or learning more about the Network's activities, please go here.

The Online Communities: Metrics and Reporting 2009 report is also available for purchase for $295.