Local usability leaders, Trent Mankelow and Sam Ng from Optimal Usability collared Steve Krug (author of Don’t Make Me Think) at a recent conference for a celebrity snap. His bible is almost compulsory reading for all Trade Me staff and copies are scattered across the office. We love Steve Krug and it appears that the feeling could be mutual. Read a sample chapter from Don’t Make Me Think.
Thanks for the great image, Trent and Sam!
The dust is settling on a busy period at Trade Me. Earlier this month we took to the road to share a few stories with over 300 New Zealand marketers and their agency folk.
The Trade Me Revolution Tour showed audiences in Wellington, Auckland and Christchurch the progress of New Zealand’s largest website over the past ten years with CEO Jon Macdonald sharing insights into our passion for speed, ease of use and some measurement tools. Bernard Hickey from Interest.co.nz told us that Kiwis are only interested in mortgages and interest rates, demonstrating these big numbers against the tiny numbers involved in our sharemarket, for example. Trent Mankelow and Mike Pethig shared some techniques and ads that people don’t hate. Finally Geoff Matthews from new-kid-on-the-block site, TaxRefunds.co.nz shared the perfect storm that is driving his traffic and profits sky high in only 7 months.
We were keen to show marketers who are moving online a few tricks and traps to help with their websites and that marketing those sites using a considered combination of Television and Trade Me is effective and recession-busting. We got some challenging questions and a bunch of great responses from attendees. All in all, a huge success.
A few thoughts arising from the series:
* This recession is a biggie. A real biggie. It’s going to take a long time to recover, and recover from.
* Recession is not a time for sitting on hands; simply ‘riding out the recession’ ain’t going to cut it this time around.
* Recession equals restart. And it’s time to hit the restart button. It’s a chance to take stock and regroup.
* Cut out the stuff that either doesn’t work or that you can’t measure.
* It’s a really good time to just do the stuff that works.
I didn’t retell this gem but it still makes sense today as a business analogy, more so now than ever before.
For many marketers the online revolution has been underway for a few years now. For some, it’s only just started. If you would like to see the video and presentation of our five speakers, please email me to mg at trademe dot co dot nz and I’ll send you the link.
Trade Me turns 10 - view the story on 3news.co.nz. Some interesting statistics towards the end of the piece …
“The numbers speak for themselves. Every day around 180,000 items are listed on Trade Me, of which 60,000 are sold. There are well over two million active users, and every day almost 500,000 different people visit the site.”
In the mysterious world of the Internet, sometimes the most obvious statistics get hidden amongst the plentiful jargon and myriad of metrics. NBR commentator, Chris Keall, has this week highlighted the phenomenal size of Trade Me’s membership, asserting that the answer to the question: ’How many New Zealanders use Trade Me? is simply ‘All of us’.
His explanation of how UBs (Unique Browsers) are calculated is pretty accurate. However the measure still to be cracked is a calculation of how many people either share the same pc/internet connection, or gather around computer screens as the auction nears closing, auto-extends with bids frantically placed by multiple parties and tension rises. If it was a magazine or newspaper we would calculate this as ‘readership’, but for computers connected to the Internet, we assume one IP address means one computer and one person.
Perhaps counting UBs is a relatively conservative measure of how many unique viewers are spending time on websites such as Trade Me?
There’s a fierce battle brewing in the automotive world. But this time it’s not the war of the wagons or a melee between marques. It’s much more sinister than that. In the almighty chase for kiwi eyeballs, there’s a scuffle for second in the chase for automotive website traffic.
A bunch of brands trail Trade Me Motors (460,509 Unique Viewers) by an almighty margin.
Autotrader (30,588 UVs) and Turners (26,458 UVs) for the week to 18th Jan 2009 take 2nd and 3rd place respectively.
Further back in the pack with less than 20,000 unique viewers that week was aa.co.nz/motoring and in fifth position with 18,534 UVs was the NZ Herald motoring section - a paltry 4% of Trade Me Motors traffic.
Page impressions for that same week make interesting reading, with Trade Me Motors serving 50,344,001 pages vs 117,001 pages for the motor part of the NZ Herald, that’s 0.2% of the TM Motors traffic! Again for comparison over the same period, average session duration for TM Motors was 22.28 minutes vs 2.56 minutes on nzherald.co.nz/motoring. Ouch.
As the year progresses, expect to see campaigns and announcements from the pack - chasing the scraps of 100,000 odd weekly viewers. Publishing can be a tough business as AutoTrader discovered last year.
As an aside, a quick delve into the archives reveals the fastest car ever listed on Trade Me Motors was a McLaren F1 and among the top searched terms on Trade Me in 2008 were Skyline, Hilux, Evo and RX7. Says something about New Zealanders. Aye, mate.
The last of my three posts about Trade Me’s recruitment campaign. We sent out 15,000 irreverent napkins (actually 14,500 - I think I’ve still got 500 in my car boot) around the local cafes. This is your best chance to apply for a hot job at Trade Me off the back of a napkin.
An extension to the theme. I lobbed a couple of my own ties on the wall, given that I won’t need them at Trade Me.
15 hot jobs at trademe.co.nz/careers.
Trade Me is on the hunt for 15 great people so we’ve planted a few novel initiatives around town. Keep an eye out. Oh and please tell your friends to apply - they’ll go quickly.
Well, it’s my last work day for a couple of weeks so Merry Xmas to everyone. I’ll be down at my bach until the 6th of Jan so if you’re passing through the Marlborough Sounds, you’re welcome to stop by for a cold one.
My NYR will be to get some value from my Les Mills membership so please help me with this. If you’re going, bully me into coming along too.
If you have nothing better to do than to spend time on the web, (or you’re working through), here’s some stuff to fill your days:
Here’s a lovely shot to remind us of the most beautiful city in NZ while we’re away from home. I’d love to credit this so please tell me who shot it if you know. Ta.
Have a safe Christmas. MG
