iVillage Usage Metrics
Prospective clients frequently ask us for tangible metrics from past projects that show a before / after improvement — or at least concrete evidence of the achievement of our client’s business goals. Although it’s fundamentally a fair question, it is also a frustrating one. The reason it’s frustrating is that our ability to provide this information is directly tied to our client’s ability to produce it, or their willingness to share it with us, or their willingness to let us publicize it. While we are perfectly happy to take credit for increased shopping conversions, page views per visit, or frequency of visitation, the reality is that many, many factors outside of a site’s design can contribute to these effects. And it is usually the case that all manner of new initiatives are tried in conjunction with a new design, so it can be quite hard to isolate the effect of any single aspect.
All that being true, we can’t help crowing a bit about some of the publicized data regarding iVillage’s most recent fiscal quarter. iVillage is a Catalyst client (case study here), and their redesign launched officially in January of this year. Usability testing of the new design was very positive, as were early reviews from both end-users and commentators. This week, iVillage released the financial results for Q2 2005. The results were great, but what interested us were some comments regarding the site’s performance since the new design launched. Here are some quotes from a Motley Fool article:
A key growth metric for iVillage is page views. Over the past year, page views increased 11% to 391 million — despite a fall in unique visitors (which was the result of the unwinding various distribution agreements due to the acquisitions of other companies).
Let’s hit that again: more page views overall (40 million more), despite fewer unique visitors. That translates to real money and, in theory, is a metric that will hold as the number of uniques climbs back to pre-redesign levels. Good stuff.
We’re not saying that Catalyst’s new design was responsible for all this. But, if you want to read it that way…
Seriously, a big CONGRATULATIONS to our friends at iVillage for a great quarter.
August 8th, 2005 at 8:19 am
Hey guys,
I know that, for iVillage and other content related sites, pageviews = inventory = $$. However, I’ve always been very skeptical about using pageviews as a success metric on any website. Sure, pageviews can go up because people are more engaged with the site’s content and features, but pageviews can also go up if a new design is confusing and makes it hard to find what you are looking for. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen your work (including iVillage) and think it’s very good. But I still think pageviews going up while uniques go down has to be considered a warning sign, rather than a reason to celebrate. Maybe you have some usability test results that prove me wrong?
Steve
August 8th, 2005 at 11:53 am
It’s a great point, Steve. Usability testing of iVillage did indicate that the new design made it easier to find content (and related content). But I agree with you that an increase in page views alone is not an adequate success indicator. Other factors need to be looked at — many of which have nothing to do with the site’s design. Still, in the absence of other negative feedback , it seems reasonable to assume that longer sessions, more pages, equates to better engagement.
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