Sifting through my RSS feeds this morning I found a link for a new Web 2.0 app called Nuconomy, a web traffic analysis startup still in beta. Now, I haven’t tried it and I’m not saying that Nuconomy is even worth watching. What got my attention is that they’re basing their marketing on the ability to measure contributions from visitors in addition to all the web traffic stats that something like Google Analytics offers. Also, the name of the company says something important. Contribution and participation is the new economy. It’s not enough to have traffic. Visitors are passive. Page views don’t tell you whether people actually engaged in your content. Hits don’t tell you whether readers found your page useful and insightful or daft and shallow. Even measuring the time on a page doesn’t give you the whole picture. Someone spending 30 seconds on your site might have wandered off disinterested or found what they needed right away. You’ll never know.
However, measuring contribution gives you new, powerful insight into how people are engaging with your brand. How many people post content? Comment on blog entries? Create user accounts? Those numbers really tell you something. But there’s a catch. Before you can measure contribution and engagement you have to allow it! Yep, that’s right folks. The only way to guarantee absolutely NO contributions is to not allow visitors to actually contribute.
There are other benefits to participation as well. Users who feel that they have a voice (even if they’re saying they don’t like you) feel that they have a stake in the conversation. Users who have a voice will use it and you’ll benefit from hearing what they have to say. Whether you’re a plumber encouraging satisfied customers to leave reviews of your services or an information worker who voices her opinion on a blog…allowing the conversation to be two-way rather than one-way makes for better conversation for all involved.
How are you encouraging participation? Engagement? Contributions?
February 18th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
Hi Sarah.
Well… it’s obvious that I agree with everything you say. That was the initial point we started from, the fact that page views just doesn’t tell you the all story.
You can see a great example for that in my last post in our company blog:
http://blog.nuconomy.com/2008/02/17/traffic-is-dead-hail-the-new-king/
But the really cool thing is the number of possibilites and insights that suddenly appear when you let your mind go off the page view model. This is where everything really start to get interesting.
If you would like, I’ll be happy to show you a little more on what we do. We always love to hget comments and hear new ieas. Just ping me at shahar at nuconomy dot com.
Shahar Nechmad
CEO, NuCconomy.