Business Intelligence Tools - News Website Increases Reader Retention with Business Intelligence Tools

Microsoft Server Product Portfolio Customer Solution Case Study News Website Increases Reader Retention with Business Intelligence Tools “Journalists can tell within a few hours how readers are Customer: derStandard.at responding to their articles. If the number of page Website: www.derstandard.at Number of Employees: 100 impressions...is low, they can re-write or re-format the Country or Region: Austria content to make it more appealing to our audience.” Industry: Media and entertainment— Books, magazines, and newspapers Alexander Holy, Head of IT, derStandard.at Partner: pmOne Customer Profile Austrian news website derStandard.at publishes articles and Founded in 1995, derStandard.at is one opinion pieces on topics ranging from politics and business to of the most popular websites in Austria, providing news, articles, and sports, science, and health. The editorial team wanted to gain opinion pieces to a readership of more deeper insight into the needs of its audience to attract and than 2 million people. retain more readers. derStandard.at deployed a Microsoft Software and Services Business Intelligence solution providing real-time reports on  Microsoft Server Product Portfolio − Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 readers’ behaviour. With these, the editorial team was able to − Windows Server 2008 R2 make the content and site design more attractive, and increase  Microsoft Office − Microsoft Office Excel 2007 reader loyalty.  Technologies − Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Business Needs high-quality content that people are Established in 1995, derStandard.at is interested in.” Until recently, employees Services the most popular Austrian news used Google Analytics, a web analytics − Microsoft SQL Server Reporting website, with a readership of more than service, to gather information about which Services 2 million people. Although it shares the content readers found most appealing. name of the national newspaper, Der Writers and designers wanted to make sure Standard, the website is run as a their articles were attracting readers, but separate organisation, with 100 they found the Google service too slow and employees. Its business model is based limited for their needs. “Google Analytics on selling online advertising space, cannot deliver real-time information, and it providing targeted advertising doesn’t provide the level of detail we need,” opportunities to businesses. To be says Holy. “We want to see how many For more information about other profitable, the company needs to attract readers each article attracts—and see it Microsoft customer successes, please visit: and retain a large online audience. quickly, so our writers can take action and www.microsoft.com/casestudies change the content if the results are not Alexander Holy, Head of IT, satisfactory. But the Google service doesn’t derStandard.at, says: “To attract and release data until midnight each day.” As a retain an audience, we need to provide result, when authors saw it, it was often no longer relevant. “If an article wasn’t system logs information about how data for analysis manually. “Gathering getting our readers’ attention, we users navigate the website, and how this information used to take database wouldn’t know until it was too late to do much time they spend on different specialists several hours. Now, any anything about it,” says Holy. articles and types of content. Holy says: employee can access the data in “Data that we track includes the number minutes,” says Holy. Employees also wanted to produce more of page impressions an article has • More compelling content. Holy says: comprehensive reports proving greater received, visits to the home page, the “Journalists can tell within a few hours detail about reader behaviour. Holy says: number of unique visitors, and how how readers are responding to their “We needed to see how the ways in long each reader stayed on the site.” articles. If the number of page which an article is presented affected Information is updated every 15 impressions and the time readers spend reader interest and retention. For minutes to ensure it accurately reflects on an article is low, they can re-write or example, how does the positioning of an current audience behaviour. re-format the content to make it more article on the home page or the wording appealing to our audience.” of a headline affect the number of views The IT team has built custom web- • Optimised website design. “Since we an article receives?” based dashboards that display started using the Microsoft Business information for authors and editors, Intelligence solution, we’ve made some The IT team could build more detailed such as home page impressions, interesting discoveries about how the reports than those the standard Google navigation paths, and time spent on design of the site affects user Analytics service provided, but it was individual articles over the course of a behaviour,” says Holy. “For example, time-consuming. Holy says: “IT specialists day. The dashboards are available on now we know that changing the had to retrieve information from the authors’ and editors’ desktops and position of an article on the home page Google service and our internal database, contain diagrams that track user can have a huge impact on the number and then create the reports manually. behaviour. Employees can also create of page impressions.” The publication This took up to a day to complete, reports with Microsoft Office Excel 2007 uses this information to refine its delaying insights and making them for deeper analysis, and view the data in website design. Holy says: “It’s helping irrelevant by the time the editorial team easy-to-read pivot tables. us attract more readers—we couldn’t received them.” get this information from Google The editorial team uses dashboards to Analytics.” Solution see how an article performs. And if an • Increased web traffic by 44 per cent. In July 2009, derStandard.at engaged article has not seen as many visits or as derStandard.at is attracting more users with Microsoft Gold Certified Partner much readers’ time as expected, than ever before. “Advertising revenue pmOne to develop a business intelligence authors will change the content. has also grown as we have increased solution, to analyse the behaviour of its Alternatively, editors will change its our market share,” says Holy. audience. The solution is based on position on the site to attract and • Enhanced reader retention. Holy says: Microsoft Business Intelligence, using engage a greater number of readers.