What you, the reader, found most interesting in the past year
It is interesting to publish a blog of any sort. What do you write about? Do you expound on topics that interest you, or do you write for your "audience"? In the case of IMS Results Count, our audience is definitely retail oriented, but it is also worldwide and diverse. Some of your best comments come from blog posts that are not about retail at all. In the spirit of Results Count, we did some analytics on what you voted as the top blog posts of this past year. Based upon page views, the results were a bit of a surprise.
Why this is important: Even the smallest sites have incredible analytics available for free. If the "customer is always right", it is important to get a periodic pulse on what readers find interesting. In that spirit, we learned a great deal on how you voted on Results Count blogs with your page views.
Did your topic make the list?
Heather Lantz, our IMS Director of Client Relationships, has been running Google Analytics on our blog site for several years. She has also been using the statistics provided by Typepad to analyze our site and traffic. These can be very useful in gauging the success of a particular blog, or one of our e-newsletter blasts to our various groups.
I have most often used the analytics to understand specific blog trends or interests in specific topics. I have never really looked at the trends across an entire year. Heather suggested that we run some analytics on page views for 2014 to determine the top interests of you the readers. Bear in mind, this is an analysis of all page views on the IMS Results Count site, including those that come from organic searches on search engines. Therefore page views were not limited to just blogs posted in 2014.
Top 5 Blog Posts viewed in 2014
After 50 weekly posts, 26,245 plus page views, and almost 400 comments another year is coming to a close. We were wondering which of our 396 total posts were the most popular in 2014. Below are the top 5 posts by page views for the year from January 1st through December 16th, 2014. We thought that you the readers would be interested in what others found most interesting in terms of topics.
1. Amazon forges another competitive advantage over retailersAfter 50 weekly posts, 26,245 plus page views, and almost 400 comments another year is coming to a close. We were wondering which of our 396 total posts were the most popular in 2014. Below are the top 5 posts by page views for the year from January 1st through December 16th, 2014. We thought that you the readers would be interested in what others found most interesting in terms of topics.
Perhaps, it's no surprise that a blog related to Amazon would be in the top slot. Amazon continues to quietly evolve in ways which enable it to be extremely competitive on price and efficiency. Without fanfare, Amazon has been quietly setting up dedicated space inside the warehouses of key suppliers. They are already gearing up for the next big frontier in e-commerce: CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods). Walmart, Target, Peapod and others recognize the size and value of being able to deliver consumables like toilet paper, diapers and toothpaste to busy moms at home. By setting up an "under-their-tent" strategy with major suppliers, Amazon gains a tremendous economic advantage over traditional retailers. Will traditional retailers evolve, or simply fade away one consumer online click at a time? We invite you to read our other posts on Amazon, including some that highlight some Amazon's vulnerabilities.
2. "Footfalls" – The single greatest miss in retail store metrics
Ok, now #2 was a bit of a surprise, even for me the measurement guy. The interest in this topic was worldwide and seems to reflect the growing interest in how to re-energize and optimize stores. The old saying is "build it and they will come". One of the greatest challenges for retailers today is they are not exactly sure if you will come, or in fact track if you did. Traffic X Conversion = Sales. While much of the current focus on "consumer experience" has been to improve conversion performance; comparatively little has been done to track and improve store traffic. In contrast, online retailers know an amazing amount about you as a consumer, how you shop, where you went on their website, shopping cart traffic, closed sales and how you left their online store. Most retail stores are barely able to count if someone came in.
3. January 29th Kicks Off 53 Weeks of Retailing in 2012
This is in fact an "older" blog post that has perennial interest. People around the world are interested in the business of retail and how their calendars work. Today's retailers strive for consistent year over year planning and reporting. Since the 1940s, they have been using a 4-5-4 week format to create consistent months and quarters. Only one problem … this format only accounts for exactly 52 weeks and 364 days. So, about every 6 years retailers have to add another week to the year. 2012 is one of those retail years with 53 weeks, and year end is on January 2nd!
4. Walmart's Secret Sauce … How the largest survives & thrives
Love or hate Walmart, it is the world's largest retailer. What is capturing readers' interest is Walmart's ability to both innovate and leverage its expertise. Amazon and omnichannel are sexy topics that grab a lot of retail press. But at the end of the day, Walmart is the largest retailer on the planet, and the second largest company in terms of revenue. To continue to grow and remain profitable is a remarkable feat given the size of their worldwide operation. And, Walmart is never one to rest on its laurels! We've posted previously about Walmart's Lab, ventures in social media, and its own initiatives in "long tail" ecommerce. Yet, if there is a secret sauce that makes Walmart successful, it is mastery of using data to hold suppliers accountable in managing its inventory and in stock rates for them!
5. India – A land of diversity in culture and retailing
My last stop on my 2012 worldwide tour of retail was Delhi, India. I have made a couple more trips back to India since then. Retail in India is changing faster than anywhere else on this planet, so there is a lot of interest in this market and the evolution. The diverse culture heritage of India's past is reflected in its cities and markets today. This diversity is reflected in everything from food to retailing. Now that India's Parliament voted to allow entry of foreign Big Box retailers, will the 11+ million small shops survive the onslaught of the "whales of retail" … aka Walmart, Tesco and others? More importantly, will the retailers of India be able to evolve quickly enough to meet the passion of India's consumers to use smartphones as a primary shopping tool.
What’s your top retail topic(s)?
WOW! What an interesting diversity of wide ranging topics. One clear take away is that our readers seem to love to read about innovation, worldwide trends and retail measurement best practices. What's your favorite topic?
Leave us a comment and tell us which your favorite is. Or better yet, send us a topic that you would like to see us cover in 2015.
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Sources:
- Like Image: Basketman; Freedigitalphotos.net
- iPad Image: Watcharakun; Freedigitalphotos.net
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