Pardon Our Dust...

A Quick Tour of the Alexa Redesign

Thank you for taking an interest in the recent Alexa redesign. We have moved quite a few things around in an effort to improve the site for you. If you have any comments or suggestions, please tell us.



Why did you change the site?

When we took a good look at the Alexa feature roadmap we realized that we needed to change. We needed to be more flexible and we needed to embrace some new technologies. So we decided to start from scratch, built a new version of the site with new technology, and along the way we took a fresh look at just about everything.

How did you decide on this design?

We are fortunate to have access to a very large group of consultants with years of experience… you!

Really. We listened to the feedback of our customers and found some common themes. Some features were hard to find. Some were not well integrated. And some others were just confusing. So we made some changes, and then we made some more until we arrived at the version you see here today.

What has changed?

It isn’t just a new look for Alexa. We have focused on several areas that customers have repeatedly told us are most important to them, including finding sites, navigating between features, and the core Alexa feature: data about websites.

Finding Sites. We ditched the search engine in favor of a site finder. Now when you type in a search term you get a list of sites that have content on that topic. This way it is easier to find the site you are looking for and go immediately to the Alexa site info, rankings and other information that you are looking for. Give it a try: Search for barbecue.

Navigating Between Features. We have reworked the tabs at the top of the site and the navigation throughout to be more consistent. Clicking on the title of a website will take you to a site info page. Clicking on a website address will take you directly to that address. And more… Alexa features should be easier to find and easier to use.

More Data About Websites. We have added three new types of traffic history graph: Pageviews per User, Bounce Rate, and Time on Site. These particular pieces of data have been repeatedly requested by marketers and investors who need to know more about the quality of traffic to sites… are the visitors to the site engaged? Is the site improving?

But I liked Alexa the way it was!

Virtually all of the data that you have come to expect from Alexa is still here. Traffic Rank, Reach, Pageviews, Sites Linking In and more… they are all here. If you have difficulty finding anything let us know.

We hope that you will come to love the new Alexa as much as we do. Surf around a little and take ‘er for a test drive. If you have some comments please share them with us. We would love to know what you think. We will read all of your comments and keep them in mind as we continue to work to improve the site. Thank you – we couldn’t do this without you.

The Economy, Cars, and Website Traffic

It is no secret that the automobile sector has been hit hard during the economic downturn. Visions of GM, Ford and Chrysler CEOs sitting in front on the Congress of the United States, hat in hand, begging to be saved and apologizing for that whole “vision” thing will stick with us for some time. But it is not just the US automakers that have been hurt. Japanese automakers have been hit hard as well, posting terrible earnings and dire warnings about future sales. But who has been hit hardest?


Web traffic isn’t a perfect predictor of earnings, but in this case, we’ll have to make an exception. First, let’s take a look at two US automakers, Ford, and Chrysler.


Going back 20 months, shortly before the economic downturn, you can see that both Ford and Chrysler websites have seen a decline in Reach and that they are now getting only 50% as much traffic as they did two years ago. Ford announced that February sales were down 48.4% year over year... hmmm, saw that one coming. Similarly, Chrysler reported a 50% decline in sales in January, year over year.


Of course it isn’t all that simple. Ford owns many brands across the world, including Lincoln, Mercury, Volvo, (Ford sold the Jaguar and Rover brands), and has an interest in many others, and the traffic to the ford.com website can’t begin to speak for all of them. But then again, maybe it can. Ford.com gets vastly more traffic than its other brands. Take a look:


If you were to add the traffic to all the Ford brands together it would not change the trend, and you would see that it is, at least in this case, a terrific predictor for future earnings.

But what of the Japanese automakers? The news stories say they’ve been hit pretty hard as well. How did their websites fare?



Ouch. Honda was hit particularly hard between mid summer and Christmas, losing over 60% of their reach. But the good news is that Honda appears to be bouncing back, no doubt due to their hybrid lineup. Unfortunately for Nissan, traffic remains the pits.


Is it all bad news? Like any good hurricane, many of the old trees fall, making way for younger trees. This recession is no different and we are going to see some smaller companies taking advantage of the older, slower, lumbering giants to provide cars that we want now. Who might they be? Will it be Tesla Motors, who decided to produce a ridiculously overpriced electric super car, that in hindsight looks like something that only an overpaid AIG exec (is there any other kind?) might drive?:



They appear to have been hit pretty hard too. Somehow spending $100,000 on a wildly impractical car seems irresponsible right now. Imagine that. But Tesla's fate may change again soon. Just today we got a sneak peak at a much more reasonably priced Tesla electric car, the Tesla Model S. Check out the graph in a few days and you will see a big jump up.


Tata Motors is another company that looks poised to make a big jump. Never heard of them, well you will soon. They are and Indian company and they have been talking about their ambitious plan to make the world’s most affordable car, the ridiculously small and appropriately named Nano, and just this morning they finally pulled off the (very small) covers. Traffic to their tata.com saw a corresponding spike:


Oh, and did I forget to mention, Tata owns Jaguar and Rover?

To end on an up-note, I’d like to show this graph, which to me illustrates how this economy is going to affect the quick and agile. Here we have scion.com, a division of Toyota, and makers of smaller, inexpensive cars, with loads of style, geared primarily to a younger audience:




You can see that December looked like the world was coming to an end for scion.com. Traffic to scion.com had dropped by over 80% from its Summer high, to near zero, but has now bounced back. As far as scion.com is concerned, this recession is over. Unfortunately, Ford and Chrysler can’t say the same thing, and this recession is going to last a bit longer. Or, worse yet, maybe this economic hurricane has toppled them for good.

Does Facebook Really Have Twitter Envy?

If you use Facebook then you have heard all the grumbling over the new Facebook layout. It seems that over 90% of users hate it, and there are rumors that Mark Zuckerberg thinks that user feedback is irrelevant. So why the change?

Facebook's new layout looks somehow familiar to Twitter users. It is now arranged to look more like a news feed. The common consensus? Facebook is trying to copy Twitter.

But how ridiculous is that? Sure, if you didn't know any better you might think that Twitter was a serious competitor to Facebook. Twitter certainly has been in the news a lot lately. It seems that every news story surrounding President Obama's speech to the joint session of Congress mentioned how our representatives were using Twitter.

But that, too, is ridiculous. If this is the source for Facebook's wildly unpopular redesign, they need to stop and take a look at some numbers before making 90% of their users unhappy. Facebook, take note:

Yes, Twitter is growing, and it is growing rapidly. Over the last three months, Twitter has grown their user base significantly, more than doubling the number of daily visitors. But look closer. Twitter is still just a blip on the horizon compared to Facebook, and a tiny one at that. It still only has 2% as many Daily Visitors as Facebook.

But don't stop there. In terms of growth, Facebook has continued to grow at an incredible rate. In whole numbers, over the period where Twitter doubled its user base, Facebook wasn't sitting still. It grew its daily visitors 32%. That's quite a feat for a site that already has 50X as many daily visitors as Twitter. It means that Facebook's increase in total daily visitors was 20X more than Twitter.

My advice to Facebook: Twitter isn't serious competition yet. Just look at the numbers.

Hard-Hitting Viral Satire

After the historic inauguration of President Barack Obama in January, the Huffington Post had a short piece about how Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart would handle the transition. The general sense was that a show that capitalized on eight years of the administration of George W. Bush might have to work a little harder to find material with a significantly more articulate president. Would having a Democrat in office make it harder for them to produce their fairly liberal satire?

To answer that question, along came Jim Cramer from CNBC's show Mad Money. In case you haven't heard, there was a back-and-forth between Stewart and the financial network; Stewart highlighted how the network had seemed very optimistic in the months preceding the current series of financial storms, citing Cramer's bullishness on Bear Stearns as an example. Stewart's outrage was real, and the satire was fierce. About three episodes of The Daily Show ended up escalating the critique, culminating in Cramer himself appearing on the show and being essentially eviscerated by Stewart. The result was a massive jump in traffic to the show's website, presumably by those seeking the relevant clips.

So, while the current state of the economy is making none of us too happy, it's been a gift to The Daily Show as they transition from nonstop Bush-bashing to the present situation. The flap with Cramer brought more eyeballs to thedailyshow.com than any time in the past six months, including election day and the inauguration.

Did you catch the show? Did you watch the clips online? Weigh in in the comments and give us your take.

Twitterpated!

When I first heard about Twitter last year, I was confused. "Why on earth," I thought, "Would I want to announce what I'm doing or thinking to the world?" I asked around and it seemed most folks were in my camp. I couldn't find friends to "Follow" any more than I could imagine what in the world would be worthy of a "Tweet".



As time passed, I decided I had to try it out for professional reasons--you can't work in the internet industry and ignore new developments in the space. I opened an account and followed the short list of people I could find who were also on Twitter. And I waited for a while, dutifully tweeting about being hungry or tired or whatever, and feeling like I must have hit that point in your life where you just can't get into what the kids are doing these days.

Finally, I found my Twitter-muse. I started tweeting in haiku! One of the greatest hurdles initially was that I can't answer a yes-or-no question in fewer than 140 characters. But seventeen syllables usually come in under the limit. I now exchange tweets with people I've never met in person or even e-mailed. I follow breaking local news and pundits. I was hooked. But I still found few people outside of work who knew about the coolness.



Needless to say, that day has passed. Twitter has steadily grown in popularity as more people have learned of its existence. At this point, if you haven't at least heard of Twitter, if not tweeted yourself--well, you're certainly not getting wi-fi in your cave. Politicians tweet now. I hear about it in the mainstream many times a day.

Twitter is one of the more recent in a series of phenomena starting with the internet, passing through personal homepages, then blogs, then social networking websites. And judging from the steady climb in the graph, Twitter is not going anywhere soon. Gone are the days when the few of us who knew about it were constantly annoyed by the appearance of what was dubbed the "Fail Whale" when logging into the site. This is all the more impressive when you consider that the graph only shows web traffic. People tweet from their mobile phones. There's a whole wave of software like Yoono that lets you participate in the tweet frenzy without even leaving whatever web page you're already on. Can you say, "Critical Mass?"

Do you have a Twitter account? How long have you been tweeting? Whom do you follow? Let us know in the comments.

Recession Discretion

When I recently mentioned the Oscars to some friends, they lamented that they were boring. This seemed odd to me because I had just read an article that said the Oscar viewership ratings were up from last year. And as you can see from Alexa's graph, the website dedicated to the Academy Awards received a lot more traffic this year than last.

Now, why were there so many people watching them if they were boring? I mean, I had friends tell me they just weren't particularly interested in any of the movies up for consideration. And aside from the buzz around Slumdog Millionaire, I could see that might be a factor.

Another article, and many like it, made me realize that perhaps it's because the Oscars are free if you have television and everyone's strapped for cash. The article just glosses the situation by stating that television viewership is up to historic highs. "The average American is now watching more TV than ever," when we have all these other gadgets and gizmos to distract us? I know people who sold their gaming systems, though. If they don't like reading or crafts, they're probably spending more time in front of the tube.

If you do a search for the words "recession" and "entertainment," you will see tons of articles about the same thing. Movies are down, sports teams are down, restaurants are down--value stores and television are up. I know I have been spending more time cooking and feeding my NPR habit than eating out or going out. And even though I've been reading like a fiend ever since I got my Amazon Kindle, these last few months have been exceptional in terms of how much more I'm reading. I gather I'm not alone.

What are you doing with your leisure time now that things are tough all over? Are you cooking more? Cleaning more? Writing letters more? Surfing the web more? Facebooking more? Let us know in the comments.