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Well, it’s been a little over a month since we put the Pinify magic in action on the main DotNetKicks.com website. I think that’s a reasonable amount of time to start seeing some data around the uptake and the usage, but of course it’s a tiny sampling, and we’ll be keeping a close eye on this one to see how it fluctuates with time.
Finding meaning
It’s always tough to see if something is working with very little data to go on and it hasn’t been this way for long because IE9 is relatively new as browser adoption goes, but we’re starting to see a firm foothold take place with approximately 12.27% of all DotNetKicks traffic coming through IE9 in July 2011 which is up from 1.95% in January and 4.56% in March. Steady growth is a good sign, and since we put this feature in place just over a month ago, two particular pieces of data are interesting to us:
It’s always nice to see that just because of this feature, those users who are now using it tend to navigate through almost four times as much content on the site than the site average. That’s an incredibly attractive statistic for advertisers who see you are doing more to keep visitors interested in your site for longer visits.
This is also reflected in the Bounce Rate for users who use this feature. These users are now 25% less likely to leave the site immediately, and over time, this will reflect in the total number of visits on the site.
Given that IE as a browser across all version covers more than 30% of all traffic on DotNetKicks, we can only hope that more of those users take the upgrade path to IE9 and beyond. We also hope that more active marketing of this feature comes from Microsoft themselves to the point where the activity of pinning your favorite sites becomes as common and intuitive as when the average user creates a short-cut to a folder on their desktop.
Taking it further
It’s probably not worth going any more in depth with just a month of data, but we definitely like where we see this going. I think perhaps the next 6 months will start providing a better picture with IE10 on the horizon with no doubt even bigger plans for pinning as a concept when Window 8 starts surfacing, but we’re glad we’ve done this little experiment early in the process and definitely think it’s worth spending more time and development and marketing dollars on.
Lessons learned
One thing for sure is that, the very fact that the website can be pinned, could use more active instead of passive marketing to explain the benefits. We’ve primarily engaged with passive marketing using unobtrusive hinting in the UI only to current visitors. If you’re doing this with your website, I’d highly recommend setting some time aside for active marketing, to make sure your visitors know about it and the benefits so that you get the best results.
Conclusion
I hope this series has given some food for thought on how IE9 and site pinning can help improve the experience for your users and give them broader visibility into the services or experiences you can provide through your website.
Something we’ve seen that is infinitely powerful is that if you can find a way to get your users to put a direct link to your website on their task bar, your identity and product become a feature in their lives, and if you make it interesting for them, you stand a good chance of building a good relationship with those users. This tool provides a gateway to exactly that – so why not exploit that opportunity as much as humanly possible?
Until next time…
Robert TheGrey
I personally think Microsoft could take this idea even further by having
a widget or hub on everyone’s desktop that provides a collection of
pins to better separate the desktop applications from the web. The web
has become so engrained in peoples computers that sometimes people don’t
even know sometimes that they are submitting sometimes sensitive
information to a website, or a simple application on their computer.Â
Sounds far fetched, but older people in general i find still have this
issue.
I definitely agree with regards to future lines drawn – who knows where this will go or what lines it’ll cross, but technologically speaking today, the pinning idea right now has just as much respect for privacy as browsing the website itself.Â
For instance, unless the pinned website is opened (by the user), the pinned state cannot change itself. Only once opened can the pinned site perform activities such as notifications etc.Submission of data from the user themselves is also only possible in the same way as they interact with a website today. It has to be a physical user action. There are no ways in which this technology can be used to spy on your users outside of them browsing your site. Of course, they’ll be visiting your site a lot more often, so you’ll gain valuable metrics from their usage, more than you would have in the past…so that’s something to consider I guess…
Thanks for the comment…
I personally think Microsoft could take this idea even further by having
a widget or hub on everyone’s desktop that provides a collection of
pins to better separate the desktop applications from the web. The web
has become so engrained in peoples computers that sometimes people don’t
even know sometimes that they are submitting sometimes sensitive
information to a website, or a simple application on their computer.Â
Sounds far fetched, but older people in general i find still have this
issue.
I definitely agree with regards to future lines drawn – who knows where this will go or what lines it’ll cross, but technologically speaking today, the pinning idea right now has just as much respect for privacy as browsing the website itself.Â
For instance, unless the pinned website is opened (by the user), the pinned state cannot change itself. Only once opened can the pinned site perform activities such as notifications etc.Submission of data from the user themselves is also only possible in the same way as they interact with a website today. It has to be a physical user action. There are no ways in which this technology can be used to spy on your users outside of them browsing your site. Of course, they’ll be visiting your site a lot more often, so you’ll gain valuable metrics from their usage, more than you would have in the past…so that’s something to consider I guess…
Thanks for the comment…
Do you think that pinning DNK to their taskbar made them more likely to visit the site, or do you think those who pinned the site were just as active before doing so?
Do you think that pinning DNK to their taskbar made them more likely to visit the site, or do you think those who pinned the site were just as active before doing so?
I just pinned DNK to my taskbar. It is better than having to create a shortcut in the desktop. Most users who have multiple browser windows open will have to do a “Show desktop” to click on the short-cut in the desktop. This feature certainly saves a few clicks.
I just pinned DNK to my taskbar. It is better than having to create a shortcut in the desktop. Most users who have multiple browser windows open will have to do a “Show desktop” to click on the short-cut in the desktop. This feature certainly saves a few clicks.
But IE9 Can’t Beat Google Chrome and Firefox :)))
But IE9 Can’t Beat Google Chrome and Firefox :)))
i can’t know about this site ? please anybody tell me ?
i can’t know about this site ? please anybody tell me ?
I wish that this site be proccees…
but it can’t compete google or firfox…!!!
I wish that this site be proccees…
but it can’t compete google or firfox…!!!