[thelist] multi-page articles and reader retention

[Steve Lewis]

Madhu Menon wrote:

> Our stats told us the painful truth. The number of people who'd click to
> the next page in a multi-page story would drop by almost 50% for every
> extra page we had. So on a 5-page story, only about 6% of the users who
> read the first page would actually go all the way to page 5.
> Unfortunately,
> with only minor deviation, this statistic was true for almost *all*
> multi-page stories we published, regardless of the content.
>
> We learned our lesson. Since then, we made them all one-page stories.
> Traffic went up.
>
This has me really curious because of the implications of what you are
saying to the design of the CMS I work on.
What do you mean traffic went up?  The number of visits to the articles
were higher than the number of visits to the first page of multi-page
articles?  Could this be explained by any other phenomena (increased
popularity and general readership of CNET India?)  I would point out
that you cannot track the number of folks who actually read the full
length of an article when it is one page rather than the first 20%
(based off what was once a 5-page story).

--Steve