Aussie Web Analyst

I dislike buzzwords. I really dislike buzzwords when they are repeated by people with no understanding of what the word actually means. Especially when these people work for an agency, earn a lot more than I do, wearing weird glasses and think they are really cool and trendy. Yes I have some issues I am trying to work through.

I have learnt to understand the benefit of buzzwords and jargon, that it is a simple way of conveying a complex idea with a single word or phrase – engagment, web 2.0, social networking. But it only works properly when both parties have the same understanding of the word or phrase. And I very much get the feeling that this is not the case with engagement and indeed with most buzzwords – as much as people like to pretend that they get it.

So what is engagement really – or what do I think it is? Is it just another term that people can throw around to pretend they know what they are talking about or is it something that people should really be thinking about or focusing on. My thoughts on it are below – but I am not going to claim that they are definitely right and I do know for a fact that I am not trendy (I don’t have the glasses).

A lot of people say engagement is vital for a website but why, what is so important about it? How does having people ‘engaged’ with your website make any difference to your bottom line?

To me, having people engaged with your website means you are using numbers and metrics to approximate the number or proportion of people who visited your website and were interested in the content. There is only a small step from being interested in your website to being satisfied with your website. So engagement is really a measure relating to satisfaction.

And why is this important, why do we want satisfied customers? Well satisfied customers are more likely to return. And to tell their friends about websites they found that were useful/good. They have entered the realms of that most valued commodity, the loyal customer. There are plenty of studies that show the profit that can be made from the loyal customer compared to the acquisition costs of luring new customers.

So I guess what I am trying to say here is that when people are saying engagement, they are really talking about satisfaction and loyalty. Which does mean that engagement is not a new buzzword or concept but instead it is something that has been around for as long as businesses have been. The difference between now and then is that in the online world, we can measure it.

Engagement is an attempt to use quantitative measures to understand satisfaction (using data that we already have), as opposed to having to rely on qualitative studies (data that we have to make an effort to acquire). Engagement is important and it should be used as an indicator of the performance of a website. Now the hard part is finding an accurate/useful way of measuring engagement…

Tags: Engagement Metrics, Web Analytics