Flickr Photo: joiseyshowaaI am slightly metrics obsessed. One of the first things I do each morning is skim through our database and check on open rates, registration rates, etc. I have been known to spend entire Wednesday evenings down the rabbit hole of Google Analytics (or at least until Top Chef comes on).

One thing I know from my obsessive stints is that it's easy to lose the forest for the trees -- to forget which metrics matter, in which contexts. It's easy to obsess over our overall bounce rate, when in fact, some pages probably should bounce, but we should REALLY worry about the bounce rate on certain pages.

The fact is, your site serves many goals, and you should frame your analysis of web metrics that way, too. Worry less about overall numbers, and more about what each section or page of your site is supposed to accomplish, and what metrics will help you measure that.

So I was super pleased to find a link on Jon Stahl's blog today to an excellent post by Drew Bernard on what metrics matter for different content on your site. A snippet:

3. Educators and Explainers: Designed to educate or explain a particular issue, project, program, or other effort.

See? Great stuff. Also, I'm totally rooting for Stephanie.