Monitoring online performance brings to mind two clichés: ‘never mind the quality, feel the width’ and ‘if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it’. As even the best statistics are measures of volume, the human tendency – to take the easiest path, by measuring what’s easiest to measure – is to monitor the width. Or in traffic terms, the volume.
That’s not wrong per se – you need to know which web pages are (and aren’t) being looked at, which email newsletters triggered the most clickthroughs – but it’s not the whole story. Like any kind of statistic, online traffic figures require interpretation.
From the outset, the world wide web was designed to be a medium for collaboration and interaction: indeed, one of the main triggers for its initial development was to allow scientists to share their information and research with each other online. This line of thinking has been traced back to a historically significant essay, As We May Think, written in 1945 by Dr Vannevar Bush, the US Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (a copy of this essay is still available online). Having directed the American scientific community to support the wartime effort, he was concerned with the peacetime application of technology to more constructive means: his ideas included a (hypothetical) model for a ‘collective memory machine’. The video clip below shows an animation – itself made in 1995 – that shows how his machine, the ‘memex’, might have looked and worked: it’s hardly as coolly iconic as an iPad, but modern technology has still barely scratched the surface of some of the ideas his essay contained.
We usually accept that widespread take-up and adoption of different technologies can be unpredictable (we’re still using fax machines, for example, but the idea of micro-payments has been explored for at least 20 years with little sign of mass take-up), but the speed – or lack of it – with which we adopt them can still be surprising. Sci-fi writer William Gibson once memorably observed that “The future is already here – it is just unevenly distributed”, and a look at the invention dates of many everyday items does prove his point (sms messages, 1992; digital camera, 1975; GPS, 1978; credit card, 1950; mobile phone, 1947; microwave oven, 1946; robots, 1921; radio, 1895; battery, 1800).
If you follow the media’s coverage of the media itself, you’ll be aware of plans for some daily newspapers – currently available to read pretty much in their entirety free of charge online – to put their content behind ‘paywalls’. There are complex business reasons at play: newspapers are struggling financially as more of us get our news from the web. Google and other search engines make it easy to browse not just the country’s but the world’s newspapers in an instant. Indeed, people use Google – making Google profitable – to access newspapers online, who make nothing from the transaction. Old business models are being outstripped not just by technology, but by the way we use it.
But listening to James Hewitt, editor of The Times, being interviewed on The Today Programme recently, he raised a point that is hugely relevant to all websites – whether or not they charge for access beyond their first page. That first page – usually your Home Page – is not just a gateway: it’s also a lure to tempt people to explore further, and an advertisement for what they will find inside. Hewitt drew the comparison of a newsstand: customers see only the front page – and usually just the top half of it. That view must tempt them to buy the paper, confident about its content.
If your business operates in a crowded and competitive marketplace, how can you make sure your website really stands out from the crowd and serves you best?
The shortest answer to this question is probably “think it through”. Although we now accept the idea of the web being an interactive environment, too many businesses still treat it as a ‘broadcast’ medium – “here’s our online brochure, please admire it”. But there are simple pieces of sound advice that might help you to kick-start your thinking:
analyse the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors’ sites to – are they clearly laid out or cluttered, easy or hard to navigate and use, what features and functionality do they have (and learn from this)
focus on what your audience want/need to know about as much as what you feel you have to tell them: to engage them, it is your audience you need to address – you are not your own customer (and remember, they control they mouse)
play to your strengths – your web site is your ‘shop window’, and you need to present yourself in the best light.
RT @MIPIMWorld: #MIPIM 2013 closes with shades of optimism. Read the final wrap-up of the week's events with hard facts and figures. htt ... 2 months ago
Monitoring online performance brings to mind two clichés: ‘never mind the quality, feel the width’ and ‘if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it’. As even the best statistics are measures of volume, the human tendency – to take the easiest path, by measuring what’s easiest to measure – is to monitor the width. Or in traffic terms, the volume.
