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| Influence of brand reputation on website visits |
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| The reputation of a company and of its brands constitutes one of the vectors directing visitors to its website. XiTi Monitor studies the importance that access by reputation occupies today, an analysis proposed exclusively by XiTi. It concerns visits generated by using the name of a company, the company’s brand names or other associated terminology typed into a Web search engine. |
| Perimeter: |
- Survey conducted from January 1 to 31, 2008
- Perimeter of 553 websites
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| Reputation: nearly 16% of website visits |
This survey concerns websites using the XiTi reputation analysis. By analyzing reputation visits, i.e. visits generated using the name of the company or its brands typed into a search engine. This research can concern the brand name alone as well as brand associated to one or several generic names.
During the survey period, January 2008, for a website which had registered the reputation analysis, the analysis confirmed that 15.6% of its total visits were due to its spontaneous reputation during search engine searches.
This proportion is an average indicator, and varies, of course, from one website to another depending on its level of reputation and its marketing strategy.
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| More than 8 reputation visits out of 10 continue beyond the first page view |
On average for an Internet site having registered the reputation analysis, it is the access by reputation, all types of access taken together, that generates most visits to two or more pages: 81% entering visits over the month of January 2008.
The websites of the portal (websites belonging to the same group as the website on which the visit is made) arrive in second place with 65% entering visits and the e-mailing campaigns are third at 63%, nearly tied with the direct access (62%) and the sponsored links (61%).
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Access by reputation is also in the lead of the number of page views per entering visit with 11.1 pages. Which represents nearly two pages more than the entering visits by direct access, already the symbol of visitor loyalty and of a serious interest in the content of the website.
One of the nuances in terms of behavior can be the following: a part of the visits in direct access would be made on a few very specific pages, spotted by the Internet user, or even a single one in certain cases (a page of offers, for example). Thus, the average number of page views per entering visit would be a bit lower to that of reputation visits, proportionally less targeted, not on the information searched but on the pages to be visited. In the same way, that would explain the visit rate to a single page of the visits by direct access (38%), two times higher to that of the reputation visits (19%).
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The reputation visits, like those via direct access, have an elevated level of interest: the visitor does not arrive on the website in the course of generalist searches or bombarded by advertising, but by initial choice.
Unlike bookmarked visits (direct access), the visitor that goes on a website via a reputation search spontaneously thinks of the brand, but does not necessarily know the website (excluding, notably, the Internet users that use the access by reputation failing having put the website in their favorites). These reputation visits, moreover very interesting, therefore represent a non-negligible acquisition source, even a potential development of loyalty to be captured, notably by the implementation of zoning marketing actions such as an online questionnaire, for example.
For a website, in addition to the fact of knowing its level of online reputation, the analysis of this presents a double interest:
- to optimize its search engine optimization via the study of generic terms associated to its brand name during searches. One of the issues is in fact to appear the highest possible in the list of results, even on these more generic searches, in order to not leave these spaces free to competitors. It is thereby also essential to get indexed the brand names well, directly including the generic terms, Internet users often use search engines as a navigation bar.
- to appreciate the impact of its offline communication operations on the evolution of its online reputation.
In order to learn more about the monitoring of your website’s reputation visits, do not hesitate to go to the “Contact us” category of XiTi Monitor.
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Methodology
XiTi customer base has been used as the basis of this survey. The registered words ‘expressions’ of the customer base are then used to identify specific requests which detect daily visits due to reputation.
The indicators presented in this survey correspond to the average trends recorded on the websites during the survey period.
Glossary
- Direct access: direct entry of the URL, bookmarks (favorites) or e-mail (via messaging software like Outlook)
- Access by e-mails: access made from webmail
- Access by Search Engines: access by keyword search in a search tool
- Access by Reputation: expressions registered by websites, refered to the name of the company, the company’s brand names or other associated terminology typed into a Web search engine
- Access by Referrer Sites: access by websites not belonging to the same group as the website on which the visit is carried out
- Access by Portal Sites: access by websites belonging to the same group as the website on which the visit is carried out
- Access by Affiliation and Partners: access from partner or affiliated websites
- Access by E-mailing Campaigns: access by e-mails declared as marketing campaigns
- Access by RSS feeds: access by a link from a RSS feed
- Access by Sponsored Links: access by keywords bought on different networks that allow the displaying of links towards the “buyer” websites according to the subject of the search
- Access by Advertising: access by buying advertising media on the Net
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