Website Traffic, Conversion and Revenue Analysis: Rolling Stone

As I reread my first blog post, I forgot to mention the underlying reason behind the creation of this blog. At Siena, I am currently taking a Marketing class focused in digital marketing. This class focuses on the use of social media, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), online advertising efforts as well as many other aspects to the digital market that make companies successful. In todays post, I am going to review one of my favorite music websites and analyze it’s website traffic, conversion, and revenue outlooks based on some of the things we have been studying in class. Here is an example of my Professor’s blog from last year to give you an idea of what to expect moving forward this year.

When it comes to the music industry, the mecca of all websites is the legendary rollingstone.com. Whether it’s for album reviews, tour updates or any music news in general, you can safely rely on the reporting done by the fine folks at Rolling Stone. For an industry where print is dead, this organization is still on of my favorite magazines to flip through and my subscription ended not to long ago so I can not wait to resubscribe and continue to enjoy. With that said, in the mean time, the online website relays all of the same content in avery concise straight forward and easy to read manner. So, with out further a do, I would like to look at rolling stone.com in regards to traffic, conversion and revenue. Hope you enjoy.

Traffic 

Beyond the actual content on each page of a website, traffic has to be one of the most important stats in assessing the success of a website. Good content is ideal, but what is it worth if nobody sees or cares about it? This is where SEO comes in handy. In the internet age, Google rules. All that matters is where your website ends up on a Google search. In the rolling stone’s case, they do a fantastic job. With the Google search “Rolling Stone”, the website is first to pop up with no ad space even needed. In fact, you have to scroll nearly halfway down the page to find something not related to the website. This is the ideal start to a fantastic site. Once on the site, Rolling Stone’s print is in very large font which also helps its rank on a Google site. The page is rich with links to other Rolling Stone’s articles about so many different topics that it gets people clicking and searching the website helping to increase traffic to other pages. This is the sign of a successful website.

Conversion

With Rolling Stone not being a retail site, conversion is more closely associated with how many articles readers are reading on the site. By utilizing a great number of website links as well as attention grabbing headlines, the website is able to generate clicks and traffic to a number of pages that contain rich information about music and pop culture. The website is successful because it offers articles about a wider variety of things. Instead of becoming a niche for music specifically, the article broaden out to the incoming traffic to help convert more efficiently. This is a term known as engagement. You may also hear the term “eye balls”. the more eyes on a site, the better chance it has at conversion if the content is rich.

Revenue Analysis

The aspect of revenue generation from Rolling Stone is a bit tricky. Because the website is not selling items, revenue comes from providing ad space to each page a user clicks when traffic gets converted. Just from reading the site on a daily basis, I can tell you that advertisement space is present. Starting with a huge ad across the home screen (see photo below) even down to advertisements on each individual article page. This company clearly understand the value of selling advertising space and does a good job at using it to generate revenue.

Overall, Rolling Stone does a great job at generating traffic, converting those clickers into readers, and finally generating revenue through the utilization of advertisements on their website.

Have a great week and remember what Dave Matthews once said “Eat, drink, and be merry!!!!”