Monday, November 3, 2014

UNIQUE VISITORS


UNIQUE VISITORS (FOUNDATIONAL)

            Customer retention is super important to any business, of course, but gaining those new prospects, leads, or purchasing customers is top of mind as well. So seeking the best methods, techniques and tools to bring those unique visitors to the website is a metric that should be given attention on a very regular basis, even daily for many companies, possibly even hourly for some.

            When pageview numbers go downhill, typically this means that in unison, the number of unique visitors is going flat. Since most users are searching out product or service needs via browsers, two areas in particular have huge impact on keeping that unique visitor number heading uphill: content and search engine optimization.

            One travel company noticed a big decline in unique visitors and the overall economic health of the company was moving right alongside. This particular company decided on Adobe Site Catalyst (a.k.a. Site Cat) to identify keyword areas where content could be optimized (Axis41.com, 2014). 

            For this travel industry client of Axis41, internet users seeking this type of expertise seemed to primarily use the keywords ‘condo’ and ‘bedroom’ in their searches. The company strived to add condo pages that included the word bedroom as much as possible to provide a combination of the most desired and most used keywords. Each page also had a call-to-action to directed the user to the booking page.

            Within a month of the new page launch, page views increased by 191%, and unique visits increased by 206% (Axis41.com, 2014). The company also added content relevant to the condominium property itself, rather than an overload of information about the surrounding area and the city. Initially, the company believed that content regarding the location of the property would be of interest, and the metrics proved that prospective customers were searching on qualities of the condominium itself. So, once again, content (and accurately and frequently updated content), directs the unique visitors to the site.

            Using an analytics tool to determine the number of unique visitors clicking through to the website shows the number of actual people that visit, and which, in turn, can provide another metric, a relative denominator for determining how many of these visitors actually equal a conversion. Does the unique visitor browse around and leave? Do they come back again later, or even repeatedly? How many visits does it take to convert to a purchase or a sales lead? The unique visitor is the beginning, and there is no end without the beginning, which makes that unique visitor so critical to the success of the website.

            Another company that blew unique visitors through the roof with content marketing is Upworthy.com. As of March of 2014, they were the ‘Fastest Growing Media Company of All Time (Yazamoinsights.com, 2014). 

            Just check out this comparison to others like Huffington Post and Business Insider.



(Courtesy of Yazamoinsights.com, 2014)

Wow, right? Crazy growth, all due to attention in the detail of content. They focus on what they consider to be meaningful content (nothing empty or without a message), and have managed to obtain over 53 million unique visitors. Initially, their primary directive was to share a landing page that could be easily shared on social media platforms. The content also led to capturing an email address (retention!). There was call-to-action all over the place, whether it be to share, or join, or provide an email.




(Courtesy of Yazamoinsights.com, 2014)

            Upworthy.com believes in the testing, and learning what they can to implement the best content and design to encourage engagement, and sharing. They are constantly testing, suggesting content based on visitor’s preferences, and kill it on social media sharing.

            Upworthy.com is a probably the best example I could find of a company that kept analysis at the forefront of all online decisions, and knew that they could never just kick back and watch it all happen, because it would be constantly changing, and to increase those unique visitors, they would have to keep up, keeping the content fresh and relevant, and test, test, test.

References:

Increase Unique Visitors by 206% with Content Marketing: a Travel Industry Case Study. Axis41.com, January, 2013. Retrieved from http://www.axis41.com/blog/search-engine-optimization/increase-unique-visitors-by-206-with-content-marketing-a-travel-industry-case-study/.


 


Ellens, Jeremy. Upworthy's 53.5M Unique Monthly Visitors Content Marketing Case Study. Yazamoinsights.com, March, 2014. Retrieved from http://www.yazamoinsights.com/optimization/upworthy-content-marketing-case-study.

 

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