How Blurb uses Web Analytics to monitor Visitor and Performance
James C. Morrison
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Executive Summary
Blurb is a book publishing company founded in 2005 for the
more sophisticated self-publisher. Its
estimated revenue is between 10 and 50 million dollars. Blurb identifies itself as self-publishing
marketing platform that allows anyone to design and publish professional
quality books and e-books. These professionally
bound books can be promoted and sold online through the Blurb website. The company has been in business since 2005
and houses a design team of professionals who are internet and media experts helping
customers bring their photos and printed stories to life. Free downloadable software is provided by the
company to all potential customers.
Blurb uses web analytics to track and promote its products and
services. Advertising and Web Analytics
tools are employed for the purpose of providing advertisements for goods and
services. These tools are also used to
analyze how the website is being used.
Google Analytics is the primary tool used by Blurb for these purposes
(Blurb, 2018).
Blurb employs web analytics to garner specific information
about all visitors coming to their website.
This includes IP addresses, the types of web browsers used and the
internet service providers used. Also
tracked is ‘referring’ and ‘exit-pages’ along with ‘pages viewed’ on their
site. Finally, the operating system,
date and time-stamp and clickstream data are monitored (Blurb, 2018).
Blurb uses third-party analytics companies and advertisers
to administer their website. Visitor and
user information is harvested with the use of cookies. These are used to push advertisements and
services that are considered to be of interest to the visitor or customer. The third party vendors are not permitted to
use data from the Blurb website.
However, data is collected from other sites regarding Blurb’s visitors
and customer’s search behavior.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is used by Blurb to monitor visitor and
customer traffic. Google analyzes how
users are navigating and using the website.
Google compiles this data to provide Blurb with specific reports on all
website activity.
Blurb Website Traffic
Blurb monitors total visits, average duration, pages viewed
per visit, and bounce rate. During the
months from August 17 to January 18, 2018, Blurb had 1.9 million visits. The average duration per visit was 2 minutes
and 20 seconds. The pages per visit were
averaged at 3.35. And the bounce rate
was 59.1 percent. In addition to total
visits, ‘Traffic by Countries’ is also measured. The top six countries documented in January
was 41.59% in the U.S., 4.39% in Australia, 4.36% in Italy, 4.25% in the U.K.,
and 3.18% in the Netherlands. In addition
to these countries, there are an additional 249 countries listed.
Traffic Sources
Blurb tracks sources
of traffic coming through their site.
Looking at these sources, 37.8% of the traffic is coming directly into
the site, 13.85% comes from referrals, 36.89% comes from a search, 8.07% comes
from social media, 2.9% comes from email and 1.4% comes from display ads.
Referrals
There are
approximately 246 referring sites directing traffic to Blurb. The top sites are normanschurman.com,
blurb.co.uk, blurb.fr, lionsmag.com, and fiercegracecollective.com.
Destination Sites
Blurb has
approximately 122 destination sites.
These sites include paypal.com at 15.90%, blurb.co.uk at 12.58%,
blurb.ca at 9.50%, blurb.fr at 7.65%, and wwwapps.ups.com at 4.81%.
Search
Blurb monitors
organic searches. Currently, 92.81% of searches are
organic. The top five organic search
‘keywords’ are blurb at 24.53%, blurb books at 1.49%, booksmart at 1/16%, book
maker at .76%, and bookwright at .46%.
The top 5 ‘paid
keywords’ searches are blurb at 5.16%, blurb books at .35%, blurb photo books
at .15%, free online album making at .08%.
Traffic from Social Media Sites
During the month of
January, 8.07% of Blurb’s traffic came from Social Media. Of the top 5 total Social Media traffic,
45.22% comes from Facebook, 25.55% comes from YouTube, 12.28% comes from
Instagram, 6.21% comes from VKontakte, and 3.99% comes from Twitter.
Display Advertising
Display Advertising
is yet another analytic that is measured by Blurb. Display makes up 1.43% of all traffic coming
into the site. The top five publishers
are thearchitectsguide.com, buzzfeed.com, strobox.com, tumbler.com, and
designobserver.com. In addition to these
publishers, there are approximately 24 others.
Website Content
Web content consists
of two subdomains. The first subdomain
is desktop and the second is mobile web.
The top five subdomains under Desktop include blurb.com at 61.77%,
secure.blurb.com at 13.59%, support.blurb.com at 9.14%, au.blurb.com at 2.82%,
and it.blurb.com at 2.42%.
Audience Interests
A unique analytic
tailored for Blurb is Audience Interests.
Blurb monitors websites visited by users who have also visited
Blurb. The analytics include Arts and
Entertainment and Photography, Business and Industry, Marketing and
Advertising, and People and Society.
Also Visited Web Sites
These include a
listing of sites that are regularly visited by Blurb customers. The top five websites include photoport.deviantart.com,
blurb-books.atlassian.net, summilux.net, summilux.net, collagecollective.co,
and bigmachine.io. In addition to these,
there are approximately 927 more site users of Blurb regularly visit.
Competitors and Similar Sites
Blurb’s competitors
and similar websites are also tracked.
Each competitive site is listed by page 1. The top ten sites include lulu.com,
bookemon.com, mypublisher.com, picaboo.com, storyjumpter.com, 48hrbooks.com,
mibook.com, asukabook.com, xlibris.com, and authorhouse.com.
Mobile App Analysis
Related mobile apps
that are tracked by analytics include Blurb Photo Books (Similarweb, 2017).
How Blurb uses the Data it Collects
Blurb uses its analytics to better serve and promote its
products and services to prospective and current customers. It tracks customers movements and choices
regarding use of the website. With the
help of analytics, Blurb gathers demographic data regarding the user and their
browsing patterns. In addition, Blurb is
analyzing how efficiently customers are navigating around the website as well
as tracking user preferences.
Advertisement effectiveness is also tracked for relevancy. Analytics are also instrumental in helping
Blurb develop promotional communications (Blurb, 2018).
My Perspective on the Blurb Website
I use Blurb several times a year to produce a professionally
bound hard-cover book complete with text and pictures. From a professional point of view, Blurb
offers many features and benefits to book publishing that other online book
publishers and photo book publishers don’t offer. However, the company could do a much better
job on page one in helping the user understand what software downloads must be
completed prior to making a book. The
website is not as intuitive as other competing websites. I believe that placing analytics on page one
to monitor new user’s movements and navigation relating to the downloading of software
would be beneficial. Page one tutorials
along with interactive training using simulations that would be analyzed for ease of use would be another recommendation
to improve conversions. All in all, I
think Blurb is using analytics to its fullest potential.
References
Blurb. (2018). Privacy Policy.
Retrieved from http://www.blurb.com/privacy
SimilarWeb. (2017).
Blurb.com. Retrieved from https://www.similarweb.com/website/blurb.com#display
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