executive
Those of you who have been following me for a while, know that when it comes to analytics I'm obsessed with patterns, behaviors and intent. Especially when it comes to content analytics.
Content analytics is such a different beast, and on top of that is the all important read-rate metric. I have written many articles about it over the past five years, but it's time to revisit it.
But first...
We all know and love analytics. It provides us with so much insight about the path that people take. From our first point of contact to the point where they finally convert.
Analytics is designed for this scenario. Let's recap.
First, we have the acquisition phase where we measure how our marketing efforts perform. Do people react to our ads, our billboards or our social campaigns? We measure how many people come from each source, medium and channel.
Once they are at our door, we get the visit. That's how many people we have successfully attracted to our shop. The question "how many visits did you have today?" is a representation of how successful we are at attracting people's attention.
But attracting people's attention doesn't mean anything by itself. So we start to measure what people do on our site. What products do people look at? What path do people take through the store? How many different things are they interested in. What products do they avoid? What products do people add to their shopping carts?
And we also measure when we fail. At what points do people leave without having converted? What products do they leave behind, or don't view at all? And how many people did you lose between filling their shopping cart and deciding to actually finish the sale?
We also have the bounce rate metric which tells us about the rate of total failure. But when you think about it, it's a weird kind of metric. What's the difference between a person coming to your site and leaving, and one that comes to your site, clicks once, and then leaves?
Well, in technical analytical terms, the first one lost interest immediately (bounced), while the other didn't. But in business terms neither of them did anything useful.
Once we have moved through all of this, we end up with the conversion. The point at which all our hard work, fears, challenges, and efforts pay off... at least for a small percentage of our original potential.
This Baekdal/Executive article can only accessed bysubscribing to Baekdal/Executive (which also gives you full access to our full archieve of executive reports)
Baekdal is a magazine for media professionals, focusing on media analysis, trends, patterns, strategy, journalistic focus, and newsroom optimization. Since 2010, it has helped publishers in more than 40 countries, including big and small publishers like Condé Nast, Bonnier, Schibsted, NRC, and others, as well as companies like Google and Microsoft.
Baekdal comes in three tiers:
Free weekly newsletters for media professionals, focusing on news, trends, and quick insights.
Weekly media insights and analysis for journalists, editors, and business managers, helping you focus and optimize your newsroom and audience engagement.
In-depth media reports for editors-in-chief, executives, and other decision makers, helping you understand the future of media, trends, patterns, monetization, data, and strategies.
Founder, media analyst, author, and publisher. Follow on Twitter
"Thomas Baekdal is one of Scandinavia's most sought-after experts in the digitization of media companies. He has made himself known for his analysis of how digitization has changed the way we consume media."
Swedish business magazine, Resumé
executive
free
executive
executive
executive
free