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?
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