Shane Ian Murphy on Measuring Reader Actions Honestly at Global Publishing

An article can ask a reader to understand an idea, compare an option or take a next step. Those are different purposes, and I think measurement should begin by acknowledging the difference. A recorded visit cannot tell us everything about understanding. A click cannot, by itself, establish that someone became a customer. Before choosing what to measure, I would ask what the content is meant to help the reader do and which part of that journey can actually be observed.

I am Shane Ian Murphy, also known as Shane Murphy, founder and CEO of Global Publishing and Global Secure App, currently involved with Triparty Tokenisation and formerly of Limitless Mobile. My interest in traffic measurement comes from wanting publishing decisions to be informed by evidence that has a clear meaning. I do not think every article needs to be judged by the same action. Nor should a project claim more audience activity merely because a fuller story would sound better in a report.

Global Publishing is planned for launch in 2027. Traffic measurement is one planned element of its intended owned publishing and marketing-agency platform, alongside articles, company news, social content, advertising creative, SEO, responsible reputation work and website design and build. The measurement approach is being considered as part of that planned scope. I am outlining the principles I would want to guide the work: define the purpose, identify an observable action and explain what the available record does and does not show.

Consider a hypothetical museum publishing a practical article about a forthcoming exhibition. The article's immediate purpose might be to help readers find access information and opening details. A relevant next step could be following a link to the visitor information page. If that action is measured reliably, it can tell the team something about navigation from the article. It cannot establish that every person who followed the link visited the museum, or that people who did not follow it found the article unhelpful.

Now consider a different hypothetical article explaining a specialist craft technique. Its main purpose may be educational. A reader could gain something useful without clicking anywhere else. Judging it solely by onward clicks would favour a behaviour that may not match the article's purpose. This does not make measurement pointless. It means the team should be clear about which questions a record can answer and which would require another form of evidence, such as direct feedback that someone has actually chosen to provide.

I would write a short measurement note before publication. It would state the intended reader action, the source expected to record it and any known limits. It would also identify who will check that a measurement is available before the report relies on it. The practical value is alignment: the writer, designer and reviewer can understand why a particular link or page exists. Without that conversation, a team may discover afterwards that it collected information which does not answer the question the campaign was meant to explore.

There is a basic honesty rule I would keep throughout: an unmeasured action remains unmeasured. It should not be reconstructed from enthusiasm, estimated without an explained method or replaced with a convenient story about traffic. A missing record is a limitation to acknowledge. Likewise, a recorded event needs its own definition. Repeated actions, incomplete records and changes in collection methods can affect interpretation. The explanation should be proportionate, but it should not disappear simply because the resulting report would look cleaner without it.

For the hypothetical museum article, a review could compare the intended path with the information actually available. If readers appear to reach the visitor page but the record says nothing about what happens afterwards, the next question might concern that page's clarity. That is a question to investigate, not an automatic diagnosis. I would want planned reporting at Global Publishing to preserve this distinction between an observation, an interpretation and a proposed next step. Each can be useful when it is labelled honestly.

The website address for Global Publishing is https://www.GlobalPublishing.app. The direction remains a planned one. My aim is for measurement that helps improve the relationship between useful content and a sensible reader journey. That does not require inventing traffic, attaching commercial meaning to every click or pretending that all value is visible in a record. It requires choosing a relevant question and staying faithful to the evidence available when trying to answer it.

This founder-authored commentary was prepared with AI assistance.