Nashville Tech Story (12/10/09)
Analytics teach us so much. We can track the profitability of our products, use predictive analysis to help us understand the direction of the marketplace, and use dashboards to keep it in front of us at all times. One area I have always been interested in is how people use the ubiquitous search box. It is important to know which pages people visit when they have a link presented to them, but it is even more important to see what they are typing in that they can’t find through the navigation tree. This is free market research. In general, technologycouncil.com visitors are most interested in the following links from our navigation as presented to them on their visit (in rank order):
Most Popular Search Terms in rank order – Nashville Technology Council – November 2009
Calendar
Board of Directors
Jobs
Events
Membership
Member Directory
However, when we analyze the terms, repeatedly search for by our visitors, a different list emerges. In this case, people are searching for the following terms from our site.
Most Popular Search Terms in rank order – Nashville Technology Council – November 2009
membership breakfast
InfoSEC
awards
Ballmer
EDS
emma
feel the beat
HP
member notes
membership breakfast speakers
omnia
4d medical
Accenture
Analytics Lunch
Andy Flatt
bass
calendar
career pathways
Chip Hayner
So what does this mean? I analyze each week how many search results we have for each term, to make sure our content is delivering on the visitor’s request. Based on our search results, we know our Members’ Services is one area that gets lots of searches. Last month we delivered 17,000+ referral views from our member directory. Technology Products and Services was the top category searched. People searching for vendors and contacts at companies is one of the quickest ways to make a connection with prospective buyers.
According to the latest study by Roger Bond and Charles Strong published this week, “Americans consumed information in 2008 for about 1.3 trillion hours, an average of almost 12 hours per day. Consumption totaled 3.6 zettabytes and 10,845 trillion words, corresponding to 100,500 words and 34 gigabytes for an average person on an average day. A zettabyte is 10 to the 21st power bytes, a million million gigabytes. Information at work is not included.”
So if search and analytics are not in your strategy, maybe it is time to revisit your strategy for 2010.
Below is a link to an Analytics Survey. We would like your input on the subject.
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=FyR9HBw9xaiOZXI8i4566Q_3d_3d
