We recently pushed out a ton of new features on the site, and have a million more to go before the end of March. However, over the course of the last month or so, we have noticed a very strange development that I think begs a very important question:

Does improving usability decrease total page views per visit?

Our last major release was about 80% usability improvements. Yes, we have a long way to go, but what is important is the effect that it had on the average number of page views per visit. In every major category that we watch for growth, WellcomeMat saw a very healthy improvement (total number of new members, total number of video uploads etc.). However, the average number of page views per visit went down almost 13%. It seems strange to me that page views are still being used to declare the “stickiness” of a site.

Popularity: 9% [?]