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October 24, 2007

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Eric T. Peterson

Larry,

Thanks for referring to my work on visitor engagement, and thanks again for your comment in my blog. I guess I personally think that if you're trying to measure something simple like conversion, or even something moderately complex like customer satisfaction, you're all set with many of the metrics in widespread deployment today.

But I guess my work on engagement is designed to address all the people that aren't converting, that aren't yet convinced to purchase in store, and aren't really satisfied or unsatisfied. Other folks have postulated that more traditional metrics like "average time spent" and "page views per session" are useful in these situations -- I don't disagree, but I don't think we should shy away from new ideas when they can be shown to be useful.

As I commented back to you in my blog, I see visitor engagement as being complimentary to conversion and customer satisfaction. Not better, not worse, complimentary. Only the test of time will tell if this metric has the predictive power of the ACSI or the raw utility of conversion.

I think it will. But I also think there are thousands of sites out there focused on finding and satisfying "engaged" visitors. Facebook comes to mind.

Nick Arnett has questioned whether I have "ground truth" for my measure. Can I put you down as "engaged" yet?

Eric T. Peterson
Web Analytics Demystified, Inc.
http://www.webanalyticsdemystified.com/

Steve Jackson

Hi Larry,

I would like to answer this question because it reflects a debate I recently had with Avinash around the subject.

It all boils down to semantics. You ask;

"Fundamentally, what does engagement really tell us?"

The answer to that question is depends on what you call engagement. I call engagement the degree and depth of your visitors interaction with your online presence and the way you distinguish an engaged visitor from a casual visitor. You are calling it sales (something I would categorize as activation).

So semantically we're talking about different things. What I would use Eric's engagement indices for is to find out for instance if there really were usability problems or it was people happily reading. If there was 10 clicks and it indicated potential confusion I would then do some qualitative assessment as to why. A heuristic analysis at least.

Br
Steve.

Larry Freed

Steve,
Thanks for the comment. Your definition of engagement ("the degree and dept of your visitor interaction..."), is good, and I feel represents well what Eric's engagement calculation will tell you. My question centers around, is that engagement good? So, if engagement doesn't distinguish positive image of the site from a negative image, does it matter how engaged they were. Now, on a blog, you could say that engagement is the measure of success. But what about informational sites (Webmd, Medline plus) or news sites (CNN, Wall St. Journal)? Is engagement there good? Is a long time on the site good or bad? Depends on if you found what you were looking for. Now it might be good for your advertisers, but is it good for your visitors. If you spend 10 minutes, 20 pages looking for an article on WSJ and don't find it, you may have seen a lot of ads, but you may never come back because you are a dissatisfied customer. From my perspective, I want to spend as little time on those sites as possible and still find what I am looking for. That is what makes me satisfied and loyal.

So, my concerns with engagement are similar to my concerns with page views, duration of site, etc., being used as metrics, that are often taken to be measures of success.

Thanks again for the comment.
-Larry

Matthew Coen

Larry,

Though your points regarding engagement are not without merit, the perspective from which you address the topic it too myopic.

If you think in terms of managing all aspect of a web business (media for example) the importance of engagement will become more obvious.

Regards,

Matthew Coen
Manager, Business Intelligence
Nissan North America, Inc.

Larry Freed

Matt,
It is good to hear from you. It has been a long time. I hope all is going well for you.

I agree that as you look at other websites, such as media, the role of engagement becomes more important. From an ad-revenue perspective, the more time on the site, the better! But does the engagement index complicate things for that purpose? If a user makes a comment on the site, does that really matter from an ad-revenue perspective? And if you think it does, does it matter if it was a positive or negative comment?

I think the effort to find the right way to measure engagement (especially for purposes of ad-revenue sites) can be important. But generally, I would say that being engaged with a site is much more positive if the user is engaged in a positive fashion - they are getting their needs met. As opposed to an angry visitor, who is leaving negative comments and is very frustrated because they cannot find what they are looking for -- but are diligent in their efforts.

Thanks for the comment.
-Larry

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