# Six month blog "performance review" This is a Friday "bonus" post for newsletter subscribers. Thank you for being subscribers! --- I started this blog six months ago — and it is a good milestone to review how the blog is performing. In this short post, I review performance with an eye to UX metrics. --- ### Top Goals I had three goals for the blog: 1. **Add content of interest to Quant UXRs**, especially readers of the [Quant UX book](https://www.amazon.com/Quantitative-User-Experience-Research-Understanding/dp/1484292677). I wanted the blog posts to: (1) add content following the style of the Quant UX book (and [R book](https://r-marketing.r-forge.r-project.org)), combining method discussions and [R code](https://quantuxblog.com/series/r-language); and (2) discuss other current topics of general interest. I think the blog has accomplished that with posts like [this one](https://quantuxblog.com/multidimensional-sentiment-analysis-part-1) on sentiment analysis. ***Score: OK***. 2. **Advance best practices in research**. Quant UX Research is a new field and I hope that I can add a social science perspective that helps to ground it in best practices. Examples include my two series on [pseudoscience](https://quantuxblog.com/series/quant-pseudoscience) and [LLMs](https://quantuxblog.com/series/llm-ai). ***Score: OK***. 3. **Stop myself from writing another book**. I'm serious! In 2023, I had many ideas for a "next book" and would have started it ... but didn't welcome a commitment of 2+ years. I hoped a blog would save me from starting a new book prematurely. ***Score: Good so far*** *(LOL) ... but that may change.* --- ### HEART UX Metrics I'm a long-time fan of the [HEART metrics framework](https://kerryrodden.com/heart/). It was described and promoted by Kerry Rodden and others at Google before I worked there. In my time at Google, I ran many HEART workshops with many product teams (my teams and others). Here's how I see the HEART Framework aligned to this blog. * **Happiness**. I have no systematic data about happiness for the blog. The comments I receive are almost all positive ... which makes *me* happy, but may be self-selected. * **Engagement**. The best statistic I have for engagement is time on page, which has been steady for months at **~1:45** (1 min & 45 sec). I don't have comparative data, but at least a large fraction of users are reading posts and are not immediately fleeing! * **Adoption**. Just this week, the blog passed 20,000 views. The number of views has been growing steadily every month, with gradually higher peak views and an overall **increasing trend of daily and unique viewers**. Here are the last 3 months (views are in light blue, and daily unique visitors in dark blue): ![](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1709177800861/7886cb9c-cf2c-4645-9a97-ee15aa0a6063.png align="center") * **Retention**. As shown in the chart above, unique visitors read more than 1 post, on average (total views > unique visitors), and that is one sign of retention. But the best retention stat I have is the number of subscribers — readers who not only visit but then sign up for the newsletter. That is growing and approaching **200 subscribers**. The open rate is around 70% for each newsletter. Here are stats for the past 10 newsletters (posts): ![](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1709178003489/b8f0cde1-d522-44a1-afd2-37c632b3d308.png align="center") * **Task Success**. For task success, I have no data ... apart from the fact that the views and open rates are consistent with success. Posts typically get 500+ views, indicating success. FWIW, here are the current top 6 posts. They reflect interested in my diverse set of topics, ranging from *R* to *LLMs* to *methods*. ![](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1709254047072/62287b26-8af7-4354-91db-d7dec1b40e84.png align="center") --- ### Takeaways * The blog goals are being met — especially the goal of "no book". I'll keep writing! * Readership exceeds expectations. I expected around 50 interested readers, but it's higher. I hope it continues to be of interest! * For this style of blog — that integrates code with markdown — Hashnode hosting has been perfect. I wish it had some extra features, but it is simple. --- ### Thank YOU for reading the blog I appreciate readers' engagement! If you have **comments** about what you like or don't like ... I'd love to hear what you like. (I'll tolerate hearing what you *don't* like!) Leave comments here, or contact me at the usual places (see [here](https://quantuxbook.com/about.html)). Finally, I'll highlight **my personal top 3 favorite posts so far**: * [Why we're far from AGI](https://quantuxblog.com/were-far-from-agi) (draws on my psychology and philosophy background) * [Easy MaxDiff in R](https://quantuxblog.com/easy-maxdiff-in-r) (promotes MaxDiff surveys, with an R-based demo) * [Multidimensional sentiment analysis](https://quantuxblog.com/multidimensional-sentiment-analysis-part-1) (R code for a favorite set of methods) Cheers! --- ### But wait ... there actually is some R code The cover photo for this post shows my RStudio setup when I was working on a recent post about time estimation for Quant projects. The R code is in [that post](https://quantuxblog.com/time-estimation-for-quant-uxr-projects). ![](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1748018570742/a63f01fc-3829-40c6-a2d6-4d52b59d89a9.png align="center")