Unique Visitors.  Time Spent On Site.  Repeat Visitors.  Bounce Rates.  These metrics and so many more and quickly becoming less a means of determining how well your site is performing.  Unique Visitors was supposed to tell us about the reach we were generating, while things like Time Spent on Site and Repeat Visitors was all about “engagement.”  And of course, the Bounce Rate told us how appealing our site was; if you will it spoke of “interest” to the visitor.

So the formula and approach for measuring success was simple.  We run a bunch of TV, print and outdoor that has a URL in it.  Of course that URL is written in minuscule font and only up for 1/2 a second during the spot, but I digress.  All these people see this URL and of course say, hey, I’ve been itching to visit a site about erectile dysfunction, so they type it in and come to the site.  After all this is a sequential process, right?  I mean we’ve only seen the path to purchase funnel a billion times over our careers.  And then after you visit the site, you’re of course going to spend gobs and gobs of time getting all the information you need.  Then, even though you have all this information you’ll of course want to come back multiple times to read all this information again and again.

Perhaps, my favorite misconception is that more time spent on site is better than less.  I’ve seen situation after situation where the reason time spent on site is so high is because the site is to difficult to navigate that you can’t find what you’re looking for.  I think you’re starting to see the lunacy of this model.

Today, though, the means for how we evaluate the performance of a site are even less relevant because simply put, people just don’t want to spend on your website.  They’d rather hang out on youTube, Facebook, etc.  This is why brands are rushing to build real estate on those sites.  So great, you’ve built a Facebook Business/Fan page.  You have 100s of thousands of followers who spending time “engaging” with your brand on Facebook.  Well, doesn’t it reason that if they’re spending time with you there, it’s coming at the expense of spending time on your website?  So, why is it so difficult to wrap our heads around the idea that previously key metrics, like Unique Visitors, should be decreasing?

Despite the obvious reasons why these data points are less important, we still rely on them to tell a story.  Why?  Simple, because those are the numbers being used internally by brand managers (and the like) to indicate their success to their superiors.  The same KPI report being used today, is the one that was used last year, the year before that and 5 years ago.  Internally, people have been conditioned to evaluate performance a certain way and it’s too difficult, daunting, challenging, time consuming, etc. to get them to change.

However, change, they must.  And it’s our duty to help them change.  If you don’t take it upon yourself to help guide the conversation and evolve how performance is being measured, you just might find yourself getting fired for not meeting a goal that’s impossible to meet.

Nothing is perfect.  I’d rather have something better now, than wait eons for something perfect.  When I was early on in my career, my client (one of the best I’ve ever had) said to me, “everything on the web is always in beta.”  She was smart, probably one of the smartest people I had worked with…so I listened.  She went on to explain that too often people forget that nothing is bug free.  Not cars, not houses, not computers, not software and certainly not websites.  Now, it would have been easy for this to have just been rhetoric.  But, over the 2+ years we worked together she proved that this wasn’t just rhetoric or idle philosophy; it was something she believed, supported and educated her team (above, below and horizontally) to embrace.  I look back at that working relationship with fondness.  We innovated and launched some of the best work I’ve had the privilege to be associated with.

Microsoft dedicates and entire site to the list of known bugs in Microsoft Office.  Google has done the same for Google Chrome.  Google, is probably one of the biggest embracers of the Always In Beta mantra.  Gmail sat in beta for 5 years before Google took off the “beta” label.  Gmail isn’t alone.  There are more than a dozen applications, tools and pieces of software that are in beta. In 2008, half of Google’s product offerings were in beta.  Think about that.  Google serves billions of users daily and they’re not afraid of bugs, broken/missing functionality or a potentially negative user experience.

In fact, here’s what a Google Spokesman said about their philosophy on beta:

“We have very high internal metrics our consumer products have to meet before coming out of beta. Our teams continue to work to improve these products and provide users with an even better experience. We believe beta has a different meaning when applied to applications on the Web, where people expect continual improvements in a product. On the Web, you don’t have to wait for the next version to be on the shelf or an update to become available. Improvements are rolled out as they’re developed. Rather than the packaged, stagnant software of decades past, we’re moving to a world of regular updates and constant feature refinement where applications live in the cloud.”

It’s a brilliant philosophy and one that helps underscore why Google has been so successful.  Bugs are part of the game and the process.  They’re also part of the way the web works.  For example, with the iPad’s launch, many of the iPhone apps had a big time bug from a user experience perspective.  They were bite sized and not taking advantage of the larger screen real estate the iPad offers.  Was this a bug?  Technically no.  But, from a user experience standpoint it was.  Was there anything these developers could have done to avoid this bug?  No, the iPad didn’t exist when they developed their apps.  The same thing happens when a new browser comes out or even a new version of the same browser.

The web is iterative in nature.  It’s an always living, breathing and changing eco system.  It’s not stagnent.  It’s not static.  It evolves.  It’s been evolving since the web became something real.  And here’s the cool thing, as the web has evolved, so have the users.  They understand that the web is always in beta.  Hell, they grew up with Internet Explorer 6

I’m not advocating embracing an idea of launching things that clearly don’t work.  But, I do believe there is a 80% rule that needs to be considered.  Because, if you abide by the concept of waiting for 100% of the bugs to be removed, you’ll miss 100% of the opportunity.

While everyone else is falling in love with a product that’s not even released yet, I’m opting to take a more realistic view on the iPad.  I think it’s going to fail.  I don’t see it being 1/10 as successful as the iPhone.  Here’s 5 reasons why it will fail to connect with consumers.

1. Price: Simply put, it’s too expensive.  Considering you can get nearly ALL of the functionality the iPad has to offer in an iPod Touch, which starts at $199.99, I don’t see many folks opting to upgrade.  Also consider the number of people who already have laptops.  You get infinitely more options on a laptop than you do with an iPad.  This essentially makes the iPad a “treat” or “splurge” item.  Considering the sorry state of the economy, can you see the average family of four spending a minimum of $499.99 for a “nice to have” product?  Me neither.  Lastly, consider all the people with Kindle’s or other eBook readers.  Buying an iPad makes no sense for these folks either.
2. The Network: The smartest thing Apple could have done was choosing any other cellular provider over AT&T.  Despite all of the uproar over AT&T’s shoddy network, it makes zero sense that they’d choose AT&T.  Can you imagine downloading a 500mb TV show from the iTunes Store over the AT&T Edge network?  Ouch, it would be painful.  But, ok…what’s done is done.  They chose AT&T.  Fine. The next smartest thing they could have done was use a normal SIM card to access the network.  This would have let people who have iPhones simply swap their SIM card from their iPhone, place it into their iPad, and then connect away.  I think this wasn’t done for only one reason.  By choosing an alternative SIM card design you are forced to pay AT&T even more money to access their horrible network.  Bad move.
3. No Camera: How they missed the boat on this is mind blowing.  The iPad with a built in camera would have been a killer device for people who are frequent travelers (business or personal).  The ability to video chat from such a lightweight and compact device would have made this a must have product for travelers.
4. No Flash: Say what you want about HTML 5, but not having Flash essentially eliminates the ability to watch over 50% of the meaningful video content on the web.  Hulu is no dice.  Network television sites like ABC.com are no dice.  Entertainment sites like Funny or Die, MetaCafe, and Break.com are no dice.  People want things to work as anticipated.  So when they visit Hulu.com and essentially get a giant fail whale, there will be huge disappointment.  That disappointment will manifest itself into negative peer to peer recommendations.  So much for buzz driving sales.
5. Walled Garden: I still can’t install apps like Office.  I still can’t install programs like Photoshop.  The ability to create and edit files is limited to the iWork software bundle.  Sure, that would be great…except no one really uses it.  Like it or not Microsoft Office is still king.  When pundits described the iPad as a large iPhone, they weren’t kidding.

The iPad could have been killer.  Instead, it’s about as exciting and will be as successful as the Newton.

UPDATE 4/3/10

This morning I headed over the Mall of America to visit the Easter Bunny.  But, seeing as I had some extra time on my hands, I decided to swing over and check out the “scene” at the Apple Store.  Well, there wasn’t much of a scene.  The Apple Store clearly was anticipating one.  There were two sets of gated lines; one for pre-orders and one for new purchases.  The gates stretched about 200 feet.  I think they were over-prepared.  When I walked by, there were 4 people in the pre-order line and 6 people in the new purchase line.  It took me all of 15 minutes to go from being the 7th person in line to purchasing the iPad for my daughter as an early birthday present.  That kind of “scene” isn’t exactly reminiscent of the iPhone release scene.  It was more like the scene at a 7-11 at 3 in the morning.  Newton, here we come!