I Like Not Being Able to See View Counts On the Medium Stats Page
Psychological trick or unnecessary hurdle
Let’s be honest.
Refreshing your stats every minute doesn’t make them go up.
At least for me.
The “new” stats page
With Medium’s big changes in August, they also (temporarily) removed the views and reads from the stats overview page in your backend.
You can still see views and reads for individual stories by clicking on them and visiting the story stats page.
This page also includes more info, like read ratio, boost, reading time, and more.
It’s quite extensive, in my opinion.
Stats aren’t always good
To the topic at hand. Since Medium removed the views from the stats overview page, I’ve been checking them much less.
And that feels great.
Constantly checking stats is an obsession. And not a helpful one.
Don’t get me wrong, working with numbers, calculating your stats over a longer period of time, and re-evaluating if necessary are all helpful and practical actions.
The key here is the bigger picture.
Comparing month to month, or year to year, will give you insightful details. Worrying about every minute of every day won’t.
Temporarily permanent
I am wondering if Medium folks see that similarly.
They could be testing how this “temporary” change affects user behavior on the stats page and if it has positive or negative effects. It’s been almost two months now.
If mostly positive, I can see them disabling this view for good.
So, is it a psychological trick or an unnecessary hurdle?
What do you think about the stats page right now? Has it influenced you?