http://www.churbuck.com/wordpress/?p=851
Now we find ourselves in the wonderfully mechanical world of web logs, when every hit, download, and interaction is logged by our Apache servers, and suddenly the Web world has been held up as the most accurately measured media in history.
Ha!
I’ve gamed web logs. Everyone has. I can pull some pearl out of a web log and say, “Aha, Left-handed Latvians prefer my site on Sundays!” Now, as we exit the era of Page Views and enter the era of Engagement, things get even squishier and gamier. Downloads versus views? Good luck.
Once again, Dave Churbuck muses and tussles with concepts that are critical in measuring the effectiveness of Internet marketing. Dave's post this morning sent me back to the coffeepot for more Yuban before the sun came up.
First off: Dave posts that Internet marketing needs to drive "engagements." Engagements! Good Lord, what anidea; Internet marketing needs to create dialog between communicators and they're audiences? Damn right they should, since this type of a process actually makes it easier to complete or initiate a commercial process.
I believe that one of the glaring mistakes of Internet marketing today is the use and growth of sites that are little more than commerce engines with electronic catalogs or (worse yet) data spec sheet page front ends. Give customers specific reasons to buy, actively engage them and the most important metric-- successful transactions go through the roof.
Although Dave-- who in the real world is Vice President of Global Marketing for Lenovo--isn't giving away any of his employer's crown jewels in his blog, His actions at work speak volumes.
Specifically, Dave has pushed members of the ThinkPad design team to begin actively blogging about design on Lenovo's web site. The blog is called "Design Matters" and it has actively engaged me with Lenovo. Oh and the most recent addition to my personal portable collection, paid for by funds from my "mad money" savings account is a Lenovo notebook with a 12-inch screen. The reason I bought it is because of a deep intellectual engagement I've had with the ThinkPad team for the last 15 years.
"Gross tonnage --page views and click throughs--as a function of success is old world web media," Churbuck adds. "It says nothing about actions taken. Engagement, is a much more important success metric since it more often leads to increased bottom line numbers and a deeper bond with customers."
I live and breathe mobile computing, yet Lenovo is about the only company that has tried to engage me in this topic area with its web site. Hewlett Packard--another company with whom I have a deep engagement-- is a distant second and I only recently discovered a relevant blog at HP.com after running encountering an HP executive at an educational computing conference here in San Diego this week Now I wish that HP, and especially Toshiba, would use the Internet to engage me in a discussion about mobile computing. If they did at least of the two aforementioned companies could win me back as a customer in time for my planned Vista migration and new equipment buying frenzy.
What's more important, page view/click throughs or engagements that are more likely to result in relationships with customers and buyers?
If there's any doubt in your mind about the answer to this questions, hit the link at the top of this post.
Jim Forbes, fogged in on the road out of Escondido on 11/03/2006.
mandatory disclosure: I first became actively engaged with the ThinkPad brand as member of IBM's Mobile Computing Advisory Council through 2002. I have also voluntarily served on similar groups ith Palm, Toshiba and Hewlett Pakard.
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