Today’s digital consumer opts for an array of niche and broad web offerings, using emerging technologies such as AJAX, RSS and widgets to create their own personalized online experiences. Our largest and most well-known media clients now see more than 50 percent of their traffic originating from outside their domain (i.e., the content that is contained in search engines, blogs, et cetera). This is a far cry from a few years ago, when 75 to 80 percent of traffic originated at their homepage. In response, we’ve helped our clients gear their site designs to welcome consumers at a specific video page or at a specific article page rather than relying on the homepage, which helps drive traffic deeper into their site.
Simplifying homepages down to the core elements and providing intuitive, visually appealing paths to additional information contained within the site helps reduce confusion and increases consumer engagement.
In conjunction with this transformation, the page view is also dying off. This has led many of us, including Nielsen//NetRatings -- just this month -- to look for a new mix of more meaningful metrics. Savvy marketers have begun to eschew the page view in favor of much more telling statistics like reach, frequency and time spent on site. Also, there is a greater emphasis on user-initiated metrics, such as subscriptions to RSS feeds and widgets, which now play bigger roles in media consumption.
Let me explain how these technologies are contributing:
- AJAX is reason No. 1 for the death of the page view. AJAX, which stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, enables us to design and build the next generation of websites and applications, where all user activity happens in one single page. Suddenly consumers can now check email, get directions, pay bills and watch as many videos as they would like without ever refreshing the page. One page = no more page views.
- RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication, is another major factor. Until recently, RSS was planted firmly in the domain of early adopters (e.g., geeks) who preferred to receive content from publishers like The New York Times or blogs and read the content in special RSS readers, all without ever actually having to visit those websites. In the near future, the notion of actually having to visit a website, let alone a page, will become antiquated.
- Widgets. Newsweek has declared ‘07 as the year of the widget, and with good reason. Widgets, which are primarily JavaScript or Flash file interface elements (like text boxes or windows) that a computer interacts with, are going mainstream. The biggest growth will be in widgets that are incorporated into web pages. YouTube, with its video streams plastered across the web, is the most prominent example. Advertisers like Volkswagen are jumping into the fray by sponsoring downloadable desktop applications (e.g., VW’s desktop calendar). We’ll no longer be constrained to “pages” but can experience any type of application in any environment at any time.
Further outlook for more big shifts
Look for ‘08 to bring a host of new ways to actually measure how users are actively engaging with a digital property. From counting “posts” (commenting on a page) to quantifying submissions of content/media (such as audio or video) to a given site, we will see a number of new metrics associated with the social web.
After all, isn’t the property that causes the most conversation (or interaction) truly the most popular?