Entries tagged with “analytics” from Tools of Change for Publishing
Customer Loyalty for Mobile Devices
Andrew Savikas
October 8, 2009
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Some of the most interesting data on trends in mobile development has been coming from Flurry, an app analytics company (developers insert little snippets of Flurry code in their apps to gather usage data).
They've plotted frequency of usage against app "retention" (what percentage of buyers returned to the app within 90 days of downloading it), and put each category of app into a corresponding quadrant:
They note that books fall squarely into the "use a lot for a short period of time" category, which is not unexpected:
In Quadrant II, we find categories like Books and Games, among the two largest app categories in both the App Store and Android Market. These application categories are characterized, on average, by intense usage over a finite period of time. Because games and books offer content that typically is consumed only once, the user usually moves on after reading a book or finishing a game.
They also draw some interesting conclusions on which categories are suitable for subscription vs. a la carte models.
Note this data comes from the set of apps using the Flurry software (they say more than 2,000), so is by no means a scientific sampling. Interesting reading nonetheless.
What Ebook Resellers Should Learn from Scribd
Andrew Savikas
July 7, 2009
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Scribd made a splash when they opened up a "Scribd Store" for selling view and download access to documents. Their terms (80% to the document publisher) are quite generous, though one reason publishers keep so much is that most of the merchandising (including pricing) is self service -- Scribd could learn a lot from other media retailers if they're interested in really promoting document sales.
But one area where existing ebook resellers could really learn from Scribd is in terms of data access and reporting. During one particularly frustrating conversation with an ebook reseller just last week, I learned that we'd be lucky to get sales reports nearly 6 weeks after any sales. These are digital sales. On the Web. Paid by credit card. No inventory to track, no shipping, no check or invoice processing.
Compare that to Scribd, where I get an email every time a document is sold telling me how much it sold for, and the total lifetime earnings for that document. I can also view a graph showing document views over time:
And every single day I get a detailed summary of document activity (this is a very small excerpt):
Here's your daily summary of what's happened with your Scribd account since
you last checked out the site.
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Someone liked your document entitled "Apache 2 Pocket Reference by O'Reilly Media"!
7 minutes ago
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Someone liked your document entitled "JRuby Cookbook by O'Reilly Media"!
7 minutes ago
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Someone liked your document entitled "Analyzing Business Data with Excel by O'Reilly Media"!
31 minutes ago
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Maria added your document "Tomcat: The Definitive Guide by O'Reilly Media" to their list of favorites
39 minutes ago
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There's also quite a variety of reporting formats and interfaces in the wild among ebook resellers, meaning lots of time is spent by either IT staff or accounting staff (or both) parsing and processing each flavor of report. Though there is a Digital Sales Report format, I haven't heard about any reseller actually using it (if you know of one, tell me in the comments).
Success on the Web requires nearly realtime analytics, and that's one area of ebook retailing Scribd seems to really understand.
Analytics: Are Streams the New Hits?
Mac Slocum
October 30, 2008
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Web analytics folks have been trying for years to remove the term "hits" from the analytics lexicon because it's an inherently flaky measurement (one Web page could theoretically yield hundreds of hits). That same flakiness has unfortunately infiltrated another measurement tool: "streams," a key metric for online video.
An off-hand mention in a New York Times article reveals cracks in the "stream" definition:
Despite all the experimentation, it is still difficult to know exactly how many viewers are watching individual TV shows and movies online. Hulu ranks its most popular content, but unlike YouTube it doesn't show the view count for each video. Still, it is clear that millions of viewers are watching some shows online. The Season 3 premiere of "Heroes" in September was streamed 8.1 million times on Hulu and NBC.com, according to the network. (All online streams are not counted as equal, because on NBC.com each segment of an episode is counted as a stream, so a full episode could count as six streams. On Hulu, one episode equals one stream.) [Emphasis added.]
This is a problem. Most digital content models rely on advertising as a revenue stream, and ad rates are generally associated with key analytics (impressions, page views, unique users, streams, clicks, etc.). Redefining a common metric puts the entire industry in flux because advertisers rarely buy inventory on one site. Now they'll need to monitor both their active campaigns as well as variations in campaign metrics (ie -- is this a Hulu stream or an NBC stream?). The last thing digital content needs is more complexity.
Overestimating the Home Page
Mac Slocum
October 13, 2008
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Brett Crosby from Google Analytics says a home page is often mistaken as the most important part of a Web site. From TechRadar:
Where are your visitors landing, bouncing, and viewing? It's often assumed user experience begins on the homepage, and this misconception drives many an ecommerce site to waste hours of design work in the wrong place. Search engines dig deeper into ecommerce sites, bringing visitors to not just 'electronics', but also televisions, MP3 players or sat navs. Analytics data will tell you where your real 'homepages' reside, so you can focus your design work there.
Crosby's point applies to content-based sites as well. Visitors often enter through an individual story page or blog post, not the home page. This is why there's value in serving up related posts, embedded links and call-outs to other features and tools on story-level pages.
Web Analytics Primer for Publishers
Mac Slocum
September 2, 2008
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Web content allows for a level of tracking and analysis unseen in other forms of media, but I get the sense some publishers are a little hazy when it comes to the established analytic measurements. This primer touches on the main measures I've used in my own efforts, but it is not exhaustive. I encourage other analytics folks to chime in with their thoughts and techniques in the comments area.
A few notes before we get into it:
- Note #1: If you check stats religiously and you're a whiz with your analytics tools, this post will be elementary and quite dull. You're better off perusing the excellent conversations at Webmaster World.
- Note #2: The term "hits" was outdated in 1999. I won't be using it here and I implore you to avoid this word -- and anyone using it within a Web traffic context -- at all costs.
With that out of the way, let's dive in ...
Visits -- When you access a specific Web site, that counts as one visit. If you leave and return, that usually counts as a second visit. I say "usually" because most analytics tools use a timer. For example: If you leave and return to a site running Google Analytics within 30 minutes, one visit is logged. But if you return after 30 minutes, a second visit is added to the tally.
- Caveat -- "Visits" should not be equated with "people." Even with a timer in place, it's possible for a single person to rack up multiple visits to your site.
- Recommendation -- Track visits over a period of months, not weeks. Long stretches will reveal the overall growth of your site and your audience.
Unique Visitors -- Unique visitors represent individual visitors to your site (in theory). This is an important metric because it gives you a sense of your audience size.
- Caveat -- Analytics tools rely on cookies to track unique visits, but cookies can be deleted or rejected by the user. There's also no way to differentiate between people using the same Web browser. Public terminals, lab computers and family PCs will all register as single users.
- Recommendation -- Limits on privacy (a good thing) and technology (not so good) prevent analytics tools from achieving the 1:1 visitor tracking utopia. For the foreseeable future, the unique visitors metric offers the best approximation of audience size. Just make sure bosses and advertisers understand the limits.
Page Views -- A page view represents a single view of a single page under a certain Web domain. If you click to another site and then click back to the original site, you'll log another page view. If you refresh the page you're viewing, another page view will be counted.
- Caveat -- A single visitor can log dozens of page views, especially if they've got an itchy refresh finger.
- Recommendation -- Page view figures should be used for general analysis. Their real value comes from the manual parsing of page view data. Close examination will reveal popular pages and topics, which can help guide future editorial efforts.
Pages Per Visit -- The Web's built-in context makes it possible to attract visitors with one piece of content, then present them with additional material on the same site through related links, embedded links, recommendations, etc. A high pages per visit average (3+ pages is quite good) means visitors are interacting with your content. A low average means visitors are viewing one page and quickly moving on to other sites.
- Caveat -- Want to see how the pages per visit average can be manipulated? Visit any major media site and look for the photo galleries. Placing a single photo on a single page and then encouraging users to click the "Next" button is an easy way to boost the pages per visit number. Pages per visit is also influenced by traffic spikes. If you receive an inbound link from a popular recommendation site (Slashdot, Digg), you'll likely see a huge increase in page views but a dramatic drop in pages per visit. Most visitors from these sites look at one piece of content and then move on to the next popular destination.
- Recommendation -- Like most analytics measurements, the pages per visit average should be examined over multi-month stretches. Traffic spikes should be disregarded -- not ignored outright, just disregarded in this case. If you see the average go up by a full page over the course of 3-6 months, you're doing something right.
Average Time on Site -- The more time users spend on your site, the more you can assume they're engaged with your content and your brand ... and your sponsors' brands. Given the hyperactive nature of Web browsing, holding visitor attention for a full minute or more is considered a success.
- Caveat -- As the Google Analytics FAQ notes, some visitors leave unattended browser windows open. Analytics tools make no distinction between an engaged viewer and a distracted viewer with messy browsing habits.
- Recommendation -- Analysis over a multi-month period is the best use for this measurement (sound familiar?). Consistent growth = good. Consistent decrease = bad.
Again, this primer is the tip of the analytics iceberg. There are many related topics worth further discussion and inquiry, including search engine optimization and Web advertising models.
There's an interesting shift that's also worth monitoring. Some publishers are looking beyond site-based statistics to gauge their overall reach across social networks, recommendation engines, RSS, mobile applications and other distributed platforms. Douglas McLennan, the founder and editor of ArtsJournal, touched on this topic in a recent interview:
I've come to the realization that ArtsJournal is not just a Web site anymore. Only 25 percent of our users ever come to the Web site, the rest get it through newsletters. We have 35,000 newsletter subscribers. Others get ArtsJournal through "newsbeats" that we provide on other Web sites. Some people get ArtsJournal through RSS feeds. In the course of an average day, there are 45,000 to 50,000 visitors -- people who use Artsjournal every day. The unique visitors per month is probably 250,000. We probably get 500,000 to 600,000 visits a month and a few million page views. So ArtsJournal is not huge by the scale of large Web sites, but it's substantial.
We may eventually see Q scores -- or a variation on that concept -- integrated into future analytics toolsets.
News Roundup: Dual-Display E-Reader Prototype, Content Tracking Not Just for Takedowns Anymore, Indiana "Explicit" Law Struck Down
Mac Slocum
July 3, 2008
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Researchers Develop Dual-Display E-Reader
Researchers from Berkeley and the University of Maryland have built a dual-display e-reader prototype that uses traditional book-reading navigation (i.e. page turns, flipping the cover under, etc.). From the New Scientist:
The two leaves can be opened and closed to simulate turning pages, or even separated to pass round or compare documents. When the two leaves are folded back, the device shows one display on each side. Simply turning it over reveals a new page. (See video of prototype)
Content Tracking Tools: Control for Some, Distribution for Others
An article in BusinessWeek looks at various uses for content tracking systems, from command-and-control monitoring to partnership opportunities via broad distribution:
Just ask Sarah Chubb, president of CondéNet.com, owner of sites ranging from the Epicurious.com cooking site to fashion site Style.com to WiredDigital, the online arm of Wired magazine. A few years ago, Chub enlisted a team of people to scour the Web for unlicensed content use. Now she has a team that does the opposite -- figuring out how to get CondéNet's recipes, fashion photos, and other content onto up-and-coming blogs and social networking sites. Her team is using Attributor's [content tracking] system not to issue takedown notices but to spot new targets. (Continue reading | Related commentary)
Indiana's "Explicit" Law Struck Down
An Indiana law requiring retailers who sell explicit material to register with the state was struck down by a U.S. Federal Court on First Amendment grounds. From the Indianapolis Star:
The law would have required anyone who intended to sell sexually explicit materials -- which plaintiffs say could have included classic literature, as well as pornography -- to register with Indiana's secretary of state, pay a $250 fee and submit a statement with details about the materials. It would have applied to new businesses and existing ones that relocated or began selling the materials after June 30. (Continue reading)
Content Tracking Tools: Control for Some, Distribution for Others
Peter Brantley
June 26, 2008
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An article in BusinessWeek looks at various uses for content tracking systems, from command-and-control monitoring to partnership opportunities via broad distribution:
Just ask Sarah Chubb, president of CondéNet.com, owner of sites ranging from the Epicurious.com cooking site to fashion site Style.com to WiredDigital, the online arm of Wired magazine. A few years ago, Chub enlisted a team of people to scour the Web for unlicensed content use. Now she has a team that does the opposite -- figuring out how to get CondéNet's recipes, fashion photos, and other content onto up-and-coming blogs and social networking sites. Her team is using Attributor's [content tracking] system not to issue takedown notices but to spot new targets.
"We used to build our sites on the idea that people would come to our home page," Chubb says. "Now, we're consciously trying to put our content in a lot of places. In most of those cases, there's a revenue opportunity for us," she says, adding that she has no interest in using the technology to launch lawsuits. "
Treating Ebooks Like Software
Mac Slocum
June 5, 2008
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Peter Kent, DNAML's senior vice president for U.S. operations, brings a software-centric perspective to ebooks. In the following Q&A, Kent discusses the merits of in-book transactions, affiliate marketing, and other digital initiatives that can benefit book publishers.
Q: In your presentation at last month's IDPF Digital Book '08 you discussed treating ebooks like software. Do you feel the software model is directly related to ebooks, or are there specific aspects of the software model ("try before you buy" trialware, download ebooks through multiple outlets, etc.) that are more in line with ebook/publishing goals?
Not sure of the distinction you're making here. I think that there's much about software distribution that applies to ebooks, and why not? Ebooks are, of course, pieces of software. In particular, providing ebooks in a trialware format makes a lot of sense, and is a proven model. That's why Amazon let's people view a portion of a book, that's why Barnes & Noble likes having people in their stores hanging out reading. And of course, download through multiple outlets makes a lot of sense, too. Why wouldn't you distribute your products as widely as possible? If trialware works -- and it does -- then you naturally want as many people as possible to get the books in their hands. The large, established publishers are going to have a shock when they see the new book-distribution world. It's no longer a gentleman's game in which everyone hands over their books to a bookstore, and then they all compete on the same level. In the future the more aggressive publishers are going to go out and find book buyers even before the buyers have thought about buying!
Q: Do publishers focus too much on the "book" aspect of ebooks? Would a shift toward a file/software perspective open things up?
Some do. The more advanced publishers understand what's going on, but I do think there's still a bias toward the old method of distributing books: give your books to a retailer who puts the books on shelves. Certainly up until recently most publishers have had the idea in their mind that in order to sell ebooks they have to create the ebooks and then give them to Amazon and other retailers to sell. Little thought has gone into new methods of distribution. What may save the publishers is that new distributors will come on the scene: distributors who understand the new landscape and go out and push the books.
Q: Are ebooks available through sites like Download.com, Tucows.com and other software-specific hubs? If not, should they be?
You can already find ebooks in many software download sites, though most do not yet have specific ebook categories. ZDNet's download site doesn't have an ebook category, for instance, though it does have an ebook "tag." Download.com has a music category and a games category, why wouldn't they have a book category? Of course they will eventually, as more and more books become available. But one thing holding back the creation of ebook categories is that only free books, or trialware books, will fit. Once books from major publishers are commonly sold as trialware, you'll see the download sites pay more attention.
Q: What about ebook availability through P2P sites/mechanisms, such as BitTorrent?
Trialware books are perfect for this form of distribution.
Q: In your conversations with publishers and others in the industry, do you feel most people understand the basics of internal ebook transactions and affiliate tagging? How do you describe these concepts to newcomers?
Most publishers haven't the slightest idea about this. When I ask publishers "do you know what affiliate marketing is?" I typically get a response such as "um, well ...". So if they don't understand what affiliate marketing is, they certainly don't understand affiliate tagging. This isn't true of all publishers; Harlequin, for instance, is really good at online marketing, and certainly understands affiliate-marketing well.
So, how do I explain these things? Well, by internal transactions, I mean that each ebook is its own shopping-cart system. You reach a point inside the book that you cannot get past without paying. You enter your credit card information into the book itself (though the actual form is retrieved from a server so, for instance, the book price can be changed at any time), and when you submit your card and it's approved, the server automatically unlocks the book, so you can continue reading.
As for affiliate tagging, this is the ability to add a code to each book you distribute -- one code for each specific distribution channel -- so the publisher or distributor knows where that book came from. If you distribute through Web Site A, 10,000 people download the book, and 500 buy it, you know that those 500 people came from Web Site A. If you put the book in a magazine insert, 100,000 people buy the magazine, 10,000 copy the book to their computers, and 500 buy it, then you know that those 500 customers came from that particular magazine insert. Thus you can pay the right company the required affiliate commissions.
So these two components, along with the ability to partially lock a book, allow you to create trialware books -- try-before-you-buy books -- that can be distributed widely, through many different channels.
Q: Is there an opportunity for competing publishers to generate affiliate revenue by selling other publishers' books?
Absolutely! Books can be bundled within books -- certainly our DNL format allows this -- so a publisher might bundle several locked books at the end of the book. Those books might belong to the publisher or, in appropriate cases, from another publisher. In particular, of course, small publishers could benefit from these sorts of relationships with other publishers.
Q: What is the upside of "try before you buy" in ebooks?
A try-before-you-buy book with built-in transaction processing, and built-in affiliate tagging, opens up a whole new world of distribution options. All of a sudden, the book can go anywhere. Sell computer books? Talk with computer manufacturers about putting your books on the desktop of every new computer sold, and talk to software manufacturers about bundling the books in their software downloads. Sell photography books? Put them on the software CDs inside digital-camera packaging. Sell wine books? Give away try-before-you-buy books on wine Web sites. Science fiction novels? Give books away on fan sites. Those three things -- try-before-you-buy, internal transaction processing, and affiliate tagging -- free books from ecommerce Web sites, and provide almost limitless marketing opportunities.
Q: What viral/social aspects does your company include in ebooks? (Email to a friend, etc.)
We include Email-to-a-Friend, of course. If you try a book, like it, and buy it, that book is now unlocked. But if you email it to a friend or colleague, when it lands on the recipient's computer it's now locked. Word of mouth is hugely important in book sales; it always has been. Email-to-a-Friend is essentially a modern-day word-of-mouth feature. We also allow people to share notes. Members of a book club could highlight areas of the books, add notes, then email the highlights and notes to each other. Members can import these things, and see who said what based on the name at the top of the notes.
Q: Are ebook giveaways useful?
Of course. Companies such as Harlequin use giveaways to build interest. I think, though, that these giveaways will get more sophisticated, as publishers learn more about try-before-you-buy books. For instance, if you're giving away a book, you're hoping that the reader will come to your site and buy another one at some point. But why not create a giveaway book, a single file, that includes a book for sale at the end of the free book? Or several books from which the reader can choose?
Q: Do you recommend user tracking and registration? How in-depth should this tracking/registration be?
Of course you want as much information as possible; we're in business, after all, so we need to create relationships with buyers. Amazon does this. I like to point out to publishers that someone owns the relationship, it's just not them. If you sell photography books and someone buys one of your books through Amazon today, tomorrow Amazon will start promoting other photography books to this buyer. Some of these books will be yours, perhaps, but most won't! So Amazon's tracking, and Amazon's benefiting. Publishers are going to learn to do the same for themselves, and some already are.
Essential Points in the Free Debate
Mac Slocum
June 2, 2008
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Expanding on "free"-centric discussions from Steven Poole and David Pogue, TechDirt's Mike Masnick argues that free experiments are only valuable if they're backed up by business models:
The basic problem is this: they hear about the importance of "free" and so they give something away for free. But they don't have a business model around the free content. They don't understand the economic forces at work. They just give stuff away and pray ... and then whine when nothing happens. As we've pointed out before, no one says that "free" by itself pays the bills. You need to have a more complete strategy than that -- and it involves a lot more than "give it away and pray."
Poole, Pogue and Masnick all support their cases (whether you agree or disagree likely depends on your overall take on free), but what I find interesting about some of these recent pieces is the tonal shift: there's an edge to them, and I'm not entirely sure where it comes from. It could be the alternative nature of free (giving stuff away is anathema to some), or maybe it springs from the odd mixture of frustration and opportunity that's swirling around the broader transition to digital. It could also emanate from ancillary topics like piracy and fading industries.
The problem with edgy discussions is that the edge generally overwhelms the core topic. And when you're dealing with an already ambiguous concept -- such as free -- distraction is even more disconcerting.
That said, there are a number of salient points within these recent posts, and each deserves to be called out:
- Free needs to be judged contextually. As Tim O'Reilly wrote in the past, free is more complicated than it initially seems, so it must to be examined amidst the goals of a particular company.
- A single experiment -- whether successful or not -- does not signify a trend. A variety of experiments need to be conducted to get a true handle on free's utility.
- Free requires an outcome. As Masnick notes, and as we've discussed here, an experiment without a strategy won't yield anything useful. Free needs to be part of a broader plan, and that plan should be thought out before giveaways begin.
- Free is one of many potential adaptations. As digital industries mature and revenue streams become more fruitful, additional models will likely form. These models deserve the same level of inquiry. Companies might find that an aggregate approach yields the best results.
- Finally ... free isn't fully formed. All viewpoints and trial runs deserve at least a passing glance.
Digital Experiments and Useful Analytics Must Go Hand-in-Hand
Mac Slocum
May 20, 2008
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Experimentation without analysis isn't worth much.
It's a succinct and obvious point, but this one phrase was my biggest takeaway from the recent IDPF Digital Book event. Leslie Hulse, vice president of digital business development at HarperCollins, drove home the experimentation-analysis relationship while discussing one of HarperCollins' free audio download experiments. Hulse concluded:
The marketing people would say this was very successful because it got all kinds of attention, but we really didn't see an impact on sales. It wasn't linked to registration, so we didn't feel we got much out of this in terms of something we could use down the road. What we learned from this experiment was: when it's free audio with no DRM and no registration, it's too easy to take it and run. So we need to tie it to registration or use DRM or use a watermark so that we can contact these people in the future or know more about how they're using it.
The merits of DRM are debatable, but Hulse's broader point is important to consider: An experiment launched without a measurement device isn't really an experiment; it's a blind giveaway.
As Hulse noted, a simple registration form can provide baseline metrics and contacts for future products. For more in-depth information, advanced analytics tools (even free ones) can be integrated into experiments to track downloads, page views, unique visitors, user-session times, geographic targeting, forwards/emails and other social components. Privacy needs to be considered in any tracking effort, but a little common sense and planning can easily find the sweet spot between consumer comfort and detailed data points.
"The key thing for us is that all these experiments must be measurable," Hulse said. "We're trying to do things where we can measure the results and move from there."
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