Find us in the University of Cincinnati News Record!

A nice article on NOTtheBookStore.com in the UC News Record, their student paper.

Results from Fall 2009 semester at Xavier

Hey all, I figured you might be interested in how the site did for the Fall 2009 semester. Since I am an engineer, crunching numbers is something I can do! I was able to figure out the breakdown of how many students are visiting the site and ordering books, and compare it with the school's demographics... in other words, market penetration. This way, I can tell if the opportunity is that I need to get more people to visit the site (meaning more advertising, marketing, spreading the word), or get more people to order on the site once they've gotten there (better design and flow of the site). Here's the results of my analysis:

Total XU students: 6000

I ran an analysis that showed that 97% of all books ordered were for undergrad classes. So I assumed only undergrads visited the site:

Total XU undergrads: 4000

From Google analytics, I found out the number of visitors to the site:

Total unique visitors to the site: 1350

That's about 33% of undergrads visited the site, assuming everyone that visited the site was an XU undergrad. But I'm sure there were some non-XU undergrads that visited the site (thanks Mom!), but a market penetration of around 30% is pretty dang good (kudos to the XU Marketing club on this one!)

Total students who placed orders: 200

There was a "bounce rate" of about 85% (meaning those people took one look and left), which is how I got the 200.

Conclusion: Since a high percentage of students visited the site, meaning they know about it, and the market penetration is good, I think the promoting and marketing part isn't the problem. As I mentioned, the Xavier Marketing Club has been on board and helping with this venture, which no doubt has driven this (a post on the XU Marketing club later!). Only 1/6 of the people who visit the site actually order a book, which is where I think the opportunity is. This means a better design of the site... to make it more intuitive for people, and to better communicate to people what the site is all about and how legit it is.

Got any thoughts of your own? Do you agree? What things would you like to see done to improve the site?

NTBS website redesign!

Xavier students who are used to the old site will be in for a (hopefully pleasant) surprise when they go to the new site (see the old site here). Here are some of the new features:

• An easier to read layout that compares the book's price, including shipping, on Amazon versus what the BookStore is offering... and how much you'll save!
• The ability to "watch" a class - be able to create a custom list of books for YOUR class
• The ability to add books you choose into a cart without leaving the site, and then checking out on Amazon
• And half.com is still there! Just click on the "half.com" icon. 

I'd really love to hear your feedback... is this an improvement over the old site? What are some things you love about it? What are some things you'd like to see improved? There's about a million things I want to do, but at least this is the first step!

Other places you can find NTBS feeds

Thanks in part to the folks in the Xavier Marketing Club (Mia in particular!) NOTtheBookStore.com has quite the web presence...

• The site itself, www.notthebookstore.com
• Facebook page (become a fan!)
• Twitter (subscribe!)
• And this blog (set your RSS feed!)

 

How it all began

It all started when I was in the middle of my MBA at Xavier University (my MBA was the best 6 years of my lfe). One of my co-workers told me I should buy my books on-line instead of at the campus bookstore... but I didn't know what books to buy for my class. Once I figured that out, the books online were so much cheaper than from the campus bookstore... I wondered why anyone would buy from the campus bookstore?

That's how NOTtheBookStore.com was born!