Great stories (in all forms) are the foundation of great news web sites.

In a perfect world, our audience would just come to us and eagerly read everything offered every day, perhaps a few times a day.

In the real world, we have to reach out and find the audience, through everything from multi-platform posting and social media to search engine optimization and cross-promotion. And more than that, we need to understand our audience - what they are reading, when do they visit, where do they come from, how can we keep them interested in our content so they stick around a little longer.

That's where metrics comes in. Adobe Site Catalyst (Omniture) is one of the tools we are using to survey information about our site visitors. For my IdeaLab project this month I am creating Site Catalyst dashboard reports for each JRC daily site, which will be customizable and easily distributed via email once a day or several times a day.

Another great tool I am using is the Site Catalyst mobile apps - if you are a metric junkie (and if you are reading this, you should be), these apps provide basic information which you can set up via dashboards on just about every metric available through the service.

On the Droid, the app looks like this:


And the iPad provides a bigger picture for the vision-challenged:


An iPhone version is also available.

The apps are free; the information can be obtained through a normal Site Catalyst login.