We all know that one day, the top novels will fall off their ranking list. So, I suggest the site would have a feature that can view the rankings in a specific time. I remember when I came here in the website and the top novel was I shall seal the heavens. How would I know the beauty of this novel if it weren't suggested and afraid to be disappointed because it's not in the top 100 of the rankings. An example would be, I could view what the top 100 novels in the month of September 2018.
I think you can see the number of readers and other such metrics already in a graph. Like in a time scale. So, just go for all time ratings/views or stuff like that. I feel the combinations of these two mechanics provide sufficient information to a reader to ascertain the long-term quality trend for a novel.
+1 My main choice for novels to read used to be sort by the number of readers and start off with novels with ~500+ chapters and frequent releases.