Author and digital marketing “Evangelist” Avinash Kaushik outlines in his commentary “Web Metrics Demystified” his four main criteria for metrics that are effective and mostly evergreen - Uncomplex, Relevant, Timely, and Instantly Useful. The specific metrics themselves - page views, bounce rates, etc. - might mean more for one company than it does to another but as long as the individual metrics stay true to the above four criteria and help improve the quality of a business’s digital marketing, they’re safe to use. In my time both as an interactive media student and burgeoning digital marketer, I’ve learned that social media metrics are not one-size-fits-all. Every business is different; what proves successful for one organization may not be a strong strategy for another. For example, a business that markets to a Baby Boomer generation would be smart to focus their marketing efforts on platforms that they spend the most time on (not Snapchat or Twitter). It was difficult to choose the metrics I feel are most important for this brief case study of Barnes and Noble’s web metrics. Nevertheless, I’ve ranked them as follows (refer to the metrics via this link if you wish to follow along: https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/scholastic.com): 1. Visits Visits, at their very core, tell us how many people visited a website. It’s usually safe to assume that most of the visitors came to a page intentionally, either due to their own curiosity, or through an ad or referral. Of course, some visitors could’ve navigated to the site due to an accidental click, but the numbers of visits give social media managers a fairly good idea of how many people are interested in their website on a given day. The importance of the number of visits a site receives is, in my opinion, closely followed by the amount of time one spends on a website. As of now, Barnes and Noble enjoys a little less than three pageviews per visitor per day (unfortunately, I don’t have a premium Amazon Alexa plan and don’t have access to how many total pageviews B&N has each day). 2. Bounce rate A bounce rate percentage details how many website visitors leave a site after viewing just one page. This is also important because it can correlate with the quality of a marketer’s content. The higher the bounce rate, the more likely it is that a business needs to rethink its marketing strategies and/or their website’s aesthetic quality. The content of a website must be relevant, eye-catching, creative, and engaging to a potential client or customer. B&N has a bounce rate of roughly 52%, meaning that B&N’s products may not necessarily appeal to most of their audience at this time, or that B&N needs a website refresh. 3. Traffic sources Where website visitors come from is crucial for organizations to know if they want to improve their marketing strategies or identify which traffic sources to focus on. For B&N, its top upstream sites include (in order) Google, Amazon, Yahoo, Facebook, and Bing. That means B&N may put more time and energy into generating ads for these five sites’ rather than putting the same amount of effort into less popular upstream sites. Another strategy would be identifying keywords that’ll boost B&N’s SEO, which leads me to my next point... 4. Keywords Knowing what words and phrases draw in the most website visitors shapes the work content creators do. Since the vast majority of B&N’s site traffic was generated by keywords like “Barnes and Noble,” “books,” and “Nook,” the copywriters who draft content for the product pages or B&N’s blog, “Barnes & Noble Reads,” will incorporate these words into their copy as much as is reasonably possible. 5. Landing page The landing page of a website very much relates to an organization’s bounce rate. Having an ad that is successful enough to be clickable is all well and good but doesn’t mean much if that visitor is disappointed by your landing page and quickly decides to navigate away. Again, having compelling content, as well as having an easy-to-navigate website, are just a few components that contribute to a website’s overall success. The magic happens when a visitor is converted into a buyer, or refers your products/services to someone else. 6. Exit page I don’t feel that an exit page (the last page one visited before ultimately leaving a website) is necessarily as important as the landing page but it does have value. If you have a high bounce rate, a step you can take to remedy this is to evaluate the content of the exit page(s) and see where you can make certain products or services look more valuable to your customer. But don’t pressure your customer into buying. It’s possible that the purchase process or the user interface may be too complicated for your audience to continue using.
2 Comments
11/4/2018 08:09:31 am
Hey Caitlin! Nice work here. I loved that you chose Barnes and Noble as your topic for this assignment. Considering we live in a world where Amazon is king, it is important for B&N to understand the data they have so they can use it to their advantage. I think for B&N bounce rate is SUPER important. I know that you can get books cheaper from their store online vs in the actual bookstore itself, so if users have high bounce rates they might likely be going to Amazon for the books instead which tend to be slightly cheaper and faster delivery rate.
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Kelcey
11/4/2018 12:29:57 pm
Hi Caitlin, great work on this blog entry! I happened to choose the same exact metrics as you for my blog entry on this assignment. But I chose a theme park (disney world) and was wondering if someone who focused on a different area would have chose different metrics. But, it seems that these metrics have been chosen by a couple of us and deemed important for the different brand websites we have analyzed. I thought you supported your reasoning for choosing each of these metrics excellently!
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