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b2b Site Traffic Takes a Bounce.

Article Excerpt
Some Construction Sector Sites Near Year-Ago Levels for Views

We can stop singing the end-of-year b2b blues now. In January most segments showed impressive--often double-digit--rebounds in audience and activity (see Digital Boxscores on pages 4-5). Construction pulled out of its seasonal downturn, as Hanley Wood leaders such as DreamHomeSource.com (+76.68% page views, +69.51% unique visitors) and BuilderOnline.com (+46.17% PVs, +31.05% UVs) climbed, as did Penton Media's ContractingBusiness.com (+34.85% PVs, +9.55% UVs).

Nice as the bounce back may be, however, there are some changes since 2008. For instance, this January, DreamHomeSource.com had 7 million PVs and 275,260 UVs, but a year ago it reached 10.3 million PVs and 418,336, per our boxscores. On the other hand, BuilderOnline.com and BigBuilder.com (+12.12% PVs, +13.22% UVs) are slightly ahead of the same period last year in page and visitor numbers. In a year that was supposed to be disastrous for building, it is astonishing that the traffic across some of the segment's sites maintained last year's levels.

Analyzing the Time-Spent Metric

Time spent at a site has become an increasingly important metric to publishers as they try to quantify that elusive but trendy concept of brand "engagement." At next month's min Day Digital Summit, we will be recognizing b2b and consumer titles that excel at engaging their audiences, and we have started sampling the time-spent metric from our boxscore members. IEEE Spectrum Online (-12.75% PVs, -26.48% UVs) tells us, for instance, that the average length of a visit to their site was 6:51 (mins:secs) in January, a number that went down along with their overall traffic from December (7:48).

Behavior across content types and sites can be quite varied, however. At Nielsen Business Media's Billboard.com, the average length of a visit was 5:36, which is typical for the site. But at another Nielsen entertainment business destination,

HollywoodReporter.com, the average length per visit was 2:03, also typical for that site. The time-spent metric is still quite young, and clearly it indicates highly variable usage patterns across categories.

Surely, the share of traffic coming to a site from search, which tends to be opportunistic and less prone to stick, plays a role in the time-spent averages. How effective will a time-spent metric be when comparing competing sites or measuring engagement? Tell...