When your website metrics aren’t aligned with your goals, for example when you’re learning in the open, these statistics can redirect your attention and influence your decision making.
Metrics like bounce rate, pageviews, time on page might feel good and be a real vanity metric, they don’t verify your actual learning or understanding process. They show public interest and how well it resonates with them.
If you start to optimize for these, you’re not actually doing learning in public but growing your outreach.
One mall caveat: If you’re able to get real engagement, by optimizing these numbers, you will get some verification from the people as a by-product. This could be a goal and then these aren’t misaligned to start with.
Ways they can redirect your attention
- Working on a website, over the actual content
- Working on SEO
- Working on more ‘publicly engaging’ content vs content where you would actually learn
- Driving public outreach when it’s not necessary
- Trying to drive up engagement when it’s not necessary