Measurement, Engagement and Attention
Written by Stephen DiMarco (contact - e-mail) -- June 11th, 2007 | Share - Save - E-mailIn this video, Jeremiah and Eric Peterson take us (and Charlene Li) to task on Attention and Engagement.
We are glad that Compete.com made it into their conversation about Attention and Engagement; looks like our Scoble interviews increased awareness of Compete.com’s usefulness for online competitive intelligence and measurement! We’re hell-bent on using our clickstream and survey capabilities to come up with universal metrics in these two areas (frameworks are key, but our view is that marketers need universal measures in order to put their own performance into context – relative to rivals, peers, or anyone else they want to compare themselves to).
Earlier this year, we introduced our Attention metric, and we disagree with the conclusions that Jeremiah and Eric have come to. Attention is a time-based measure, so logically the more time we spend on a site, the more attention we give it. We think of Attention as a pie-chart – its finite – so the sites that are increasing in Attention over time are performing well along this metric. Sure people can cite the issues of multiple browser tabs, etc, but the point is that marketers need an effective way to first identify and then see why sites like www.millsberry.com are so incredibly cool. This General Mills site ranks in the top 1,500 in visitors but leaps into the top 100 in Attention because its members spend over 30 minutes on the site each time they visit it (more than Myspace):
Ask the folks at MillsOnline if they think that total time spent on site is a great way to understand whether they are increasing/sustaining Attention in the marketplace – we bet they’ll say yes.
Here’s another great application of our Attention metric:
Don’t you think this will be a great predictor for which candidates are generating the most momentum between now and Fall 2008?!
Engagement is a different story altogether – and we agree with Jeremiah and Eric. Unlike Attention (a pie-chart), we see Engagement as a spectrum. Worse yet, it is tough to place companies/sites on the same spectrum because of the important “emotional layer” of metrics that need to be considered and that are company/situation specific. Our view is that you necessarily need to use attitudinal inputs gathered via surveys to crack the code on a universal Engagement metric (and we think that Reicheld’s work around advocacy and net promoter scores is a fertile place to begin).
We appreciate Jeremiah and Eric including us in their conversation and would love to advance our approaches with further feedback from them and their collective fans!
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June 11th, 2007 at 11:32 am
You guys are doing some innovative things, I’m glad to have you in the piece.
June 11th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
re. the folks at MillsOnline & time online: Yes.
June 12th, 2007 at 11:37 am
I agree w/ you that attention is finite and engagement is more of a spectrum [ideally] requiring attitudinal inputs. Two comments though:
1) Net promoter scores are hardly the place to start. The net promoter concept is flawed in many ways. First off, younger consumers are more likely to refer products/companies to friends/family than older folks (that’s from Forrester data). That doesn’t make older consumers less engaged. With the popularity of NPS as an incentive tool, there have been a number of instances reported in the blogs and press where individuals w/in firms have offered to pay customers for good “advocacy” ratings.
2) The idea of a “universal” engagement sounds nice, but in practice it should be specific to a firm, based on its strategy and the nature of the products and services it offers. What constitutes engagement to one firm may be very different to even its competitors, let alone firms in other industries.
June 13th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
Ron,
Thanks for your comments. I was an avid reader of your work at Forrester. I like what you and Michael Della Penna are doing at Epsilion. I agree that a universal engagement measure may be the hardest metric to crack, but that’s what makes it so damn irresistible.
I have been playing around with a formula that says that Engagement is a function of Attention (sustained over time), Intent (number of people ready to buy your product) and Advocacy (degree to which people rave about your product). Your points about the Net Promoter score are well-taken.
I would love to get a dialogue going with you on engagement if you’re interested.
Stephen
June 22nd, 2007 at 1:38 pm
For anyone interested in more information on Net Promoter, please visit http://www.netpromoter.com. More specifically, the Net Promoter New York Conference blog highlights successes with Net Promoter by companies such as GE, Schwab, T-Mobile, Experian, and more (scan the “Categories” at right): http://netpromoter.typepad.com/npc2007/. Even more specifically, is a Net Promoter discussion forum – Can we quantify the benefits of increasing NPS? – link that aggregates some of the Conference blog posts (brief registration process required): http://netpromoter.groupee.net/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/2731073251/m/3801040152
June 22nd, 2007 at 1:42 pm
Sorry if this is a double post. I’m having problems posting:
For anyone interested in more information on Net Promoter and how companies such as GE, Schwab, T-Mobile, Experian are benefiting, please visit the Net Promoter New York Conference blog: http://netpromoter.typepad.com/npc2007/. You can scan the “Categories” at the right.
July 24th, 2007 at 3:49 am
User Engagement is a Depth, not a Breadth, metric (and # UV’s / # Facebook App users are crappy UE metrics)
I don’t have all my thoughts on this organized very well yet, but regardless of whether i have the stats to back it up yet, i’d like to make a rather sweeping statement about measuring user engagement: User Engagement is a depth, not a breadth, metri…
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