OK, that might be a bit of a generalisation, but let me explain...
Setting the Scene
Members of the library can access the online version of Encyclopedia Britannica from the website. The pages for Britannica (and Britannica Image Quest) are currently located in a section title Digital Collections. This section includes our online services and databases that people can access from home. People can select either Research Databases or Encyclopedias & Reference Books and they will see Britannica in the list of options, as shown below.
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| Encyclopedias & Reference Books page on the library website |
A couple of months ago I was asked about moving the Encyclopedia Britannica (and Britannica Image Quest) pages on the library website from their current location under Digital Collections to the Kids and Parents section. The thinking was that staff in the Children's section were often recommending Britannica as a resource for school homework and assignments and in this context it might get more use if people could find it under Kids and Parents.
As an ego-maniac I immediately thought that I was right and that Britannica belonged where it was, because I decided that it should go there. Of course that kind of thinking doesn't help anyone. But I did firmly believe that Britannica's location in the site would not impact use greatly, providing it was in a reasonably logical location, for reasons which I will come to shortly. But you can never be sure and I thought it would be a good opportunity to test my assumptions.
Rather than jump straight to moving the Britannica pages, we started with an unmissable promo for Britannica on the landing page for the Kids and Parents section of the site with a view to measuring the impact on the use of these two resources. We figured that if the promotional content had a discernible impact on the use of Britannica it would indicate that a move would be warranted.
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| The Kids and Parents page showing the links to Britannica and Image Quest |
The Numbers
Total Sessions for Encyclopedia Britannica
| 2014 | 2015 | |
|---|---|---|
| April |
336
|
408
|
| June |
262
|
251
|
| Change (%) |
-22%
|
-38%
|
I looked at the figures for April (when there was no promo) and June (when the promo was live). In April 2015 we had 408 sessions on Britannica, which dropped to 251 sessions in June (while the promo was on the site). This represents a 38% decrease from April to June.
Based on the normal pattern of use our resources get, however, I would expect a drop in use from April to June as a seasonal trend. Our resource usage typically peaks mid-semester; around March/April and September/October. So I compared this year with the previous year.
In April 2014 Britannica had 336 sessions, which dropped to 262 sessions in June 2014, representing a 22% decrease in use. That means that the decrease in usage of Britannica was greater from April to June 2015, when the promotion was on the site, than it was in 2015.
Unfortunately, the promo had no discernible positive impact on Britannica usage.
How can that be? Did our promo negatively effect usage?
I don't think that the promo acually had a negative impact on usage, despite the decrease being larger when the promo was live. Rather I think it demonstrates that having the britannica links in the digital collections section of the website is not negatively impacting its use.More importantly, I think it also illustrates that 'advertising' things on the website actually has very little effect. In my opinion, the promotion has to happen elsewhere - through staff interaction directly with customers, through posters, email marketing and social media. It's only when people already know that something exists that they go looking for it on the website. Virtually no one is browsing the library website just to see what's on offer.
In fact, you can extrapolate that as more general trend for the web itself; as I said before the web is very task focused. When was the last time you visited a company or organisation's website without knowing what you were looking for? With a few notable exceptions, that is rare behaviour.
In fact, once someone knows that they want to use Encyclopedia Britannica from the library, where the page that contains the login link lives within the structure of the site is, to a large extent, irrelevant. You see, somewhere over 60% of our website traffic comes from Google searches. It's much more important to create the Britannica pages on our site in such a way that they are easily indexed by Google and match up to the search terms people who are looking for Britannica will use. This is how you promote your services - make sure you have good content that performs well in search results. I'm not talking about paid search results here either, just well crafted content with good structure that includes key search terms.
If you search for some combination of the words sutherland, library and britannica the first matching result will be the Britannica page on our website. You don't need to look through our site and find it and you will bypass and promotional efforts we make on other parts of the site.
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| Google search for 'britannica sutherland library' |
So, no marketing on the website?
Generally speaking I don't think that your website is a great place to do marketing. There are some exceptions though. The home page is very valuable real estate. If we had promoted Encyclopedia Britannica on the home page I'm confident that we could increase usage. However, this sort of increase is for the most part temporary. In my experience, homepage promotions work while they are on the homepage. They even have some lingering effect after the promotional content has been removed. Those effects gradually ebb away over time though. And you can't put everything on the home page forever.It's a much better long term strategy to work on improving your content and making it search engine friendly. Spend your time finding out what people want to do and make sure it is clear for visitors how to do those things.
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