Hopefully, this post will show people how to glean useful data out of their site statistics. We'll be using our own actual data as the example - therefore all of the analysis is in the context of real estate video.  However, the same techniques can just as easily apply to listings, virtual tours, or blog posts.

Measuring Engagement Is Important But Interest and Loyalty Are the Next Steps

We've previously taked about engagement which is defined as the willingness of a visitor to watch a video (see http://activerain.com/blogsview/163603/Measuring-Online-Engagement-With).  The below data is an extension of the engagement metric as we are analyzing the willingness of a visitor that has watched a video to actually watch another in the same session or to come back at another time in the same month and watch a video. In order to keep these numbers in context keep in mind that we had over 90,000 real estate videos watched on our video infrastructure in August 2007 alone.  Unlike many real estate video sites, property videos represent about 80% of all video views.

Key Metric Analyzed: User Interest Level

We'll define interest level as the willingness of a user that is sufficiently engaged to watch one video to go on and  watch at least a second video in a given session.  The justification is that if a given watches only one video, then they are not really interested in other properties for whatever reasons.  The reasons could be related to the website, the content, or the visitor availability.

In October 2007, 6.8% of our visitors watched more than one video in a single session, 1.9% watched more than 5 videos in a single session, and 0.03% watched more than 10 videos in a single session.

Compare this to prior three months (July, August, September) where 7.6% watched more than one video in a given session, 1.6% watched more than 5 videos in single session, and 0.05% watched more than 10 videos in a single session.

so we can glean from the data that just over 7% of those that are sufficiently engaged to watch one videos on our site will have enough interest to watch a second.

Key Metric Analyzed: User Loyalty

We'll define user loyalty as the willingness of a given visitor that has watched at least one video to come back to the site in the same month and watch at least one another video. These numbers do not count visitors that come in late in the month and return after the first of the next month or visitors that are for whatever reason unidentifiable. They also do not count repeat visits where no videos are watched.

In October 2007, 42.4% of identifiable users that watched a video in the month came back in the same month to watch another video. Wowsa. 11% came back 5 or more times in the month and watched at least one video each time. 2.5% came back 10 or more times.

In September 2007, 45.5% came back more than once to watch another video and 8.5% came back 5 or more times and watched at least one video each time. 3.2% came back 10 or more times.

In August 2007 , 42.6% came back more than once to watch another video and 8.8% came back 5 or more times and watched at least one one video each time. 3.2% came back 10 or more times. 

In July 2007, 42.6% came back more than once to watch another video and 8.8% came back 5 or more times. 3.2% came back 10 or more times.

Needless to say, we are thrilled with the our results to this point with over 40% of those watching a video coming back to watch another.  these repeat visitors that watch videos each time likely represent prospective buyers.  

Stay tuned - we'll have more analysis methods to demonstrate in future posts.

Tony (daily blog: http://forsalebylocals.wordpress.com/)