Engaging Like A Rockstar: Part 1
What does a rockstar have that web site metrics don’t?
Engagement.
There has been so much talk lately concerning engagement, especially with the shift from merely people count to attention mapping it seems that many are very confused with the multiple definition of engagement. What is engagement anyway?
At one time measuring a sites activity was only counting how many unique visitors your site had, companies were being purchased almost purely on the amount of unique visitors that came to one’s site. As time passed many found that the numbers were rigged (or so they seemed, maybe just inaccurate) and many began to doubt the accuracy of these metrics. So how would one then gauge how many people really came to one’s site? How did one know that it was an actual human and not a bot?
Many companies then moved to what is now called Engagement mapping or collecting a series of metrics including how much time one spends at a particular site. The philosophy of this method comes from the basis that everyone only has so much time in a day, week, or month and how much time you spend on a particular site for a certain amount of time decides how engaged you are with the site. However, as this is a more accurate accounting for all types of sites including AJAX (which is not counted by unique visitor counts) I believe it still misses some very obvious points.
I believe that how much time you spend somewhere does show how committed you are to directing your browser for a certain time but does it truly equal the type of power that people are willing to pay for?
You may spend three hours on eBay but if you don’t buy anything then does it truly matter that you were there at all?
What do you think?
How do rockstars engage with their audiences better than websites?
Engagement is a fickle thing. If I want the shortest answer to todays headlines, I look at AOL or Yahoo. I spend less than 10 minutes scanning their headlines, but trust me, I I visit them often. On the other hand, some websites are so difficult to navigate that I have to spend five or six minutes looking for the post I want. That artificially increases my “engagement factor”. I end up spending more time on a website that actually means less to me.
There’s no silver bullet. The web is new compared to the telegraph, so I suspect that more tests/regulations/standards are going to be tried and applied before we finally figure out what really matters.
I personally think that unique visitors will come to the forefront again in the future. It will be part of a larger algorithm, but they’ll be important again.