While the international jewellery industry has had to contend with the ramifcations of the global pandemic, in 2021 Jeweller cemented its position as the world’s #1 ranked industry publication.
As of 31 December 2021, Alexa, the global ranking system for analysing website readership, recorded Jeweller’s world ranking at 54,878, ahead of 28 other business-to-business (b2b) jewellery publications.
Alexa, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amazon, measures important metrics, including ‘Traffic’, ‘Daily Time’, ‘Page Views’ and ‘Bounce Rate’. The global traffic rank is a measure of the performance of a website over the past 90 days, relative to other websites.
The rank is calculated using a combination of average daily visitors to a site, the time spent per visitor and page views, thereby measuring visitor engagement.
Web analytics – information and meaningful data – means the lower the number the higher the ranking. For example, the site with the largest combination of visitors and Page Views (google.com) is ranked #1.
The tables below detail Alexa’s independent anaylsis of important quantitative measures (metrics) across a range of b2b jewellery publications by country/region. When there is insufficient data to measure and/or compare the publications’ statistics for the period, Alexa records ‘No data’.
RANKING THE WORLD’S JEWELLERY INDUSTRY MAGAZINES
By the end of 2021 Jeweller was ranked 54,878, in the world, well ahead of other jewellery industry titles in more populous countries. For example, the US magazines JCK, National Jeweler, and Instore ranked 82,055, 134,498, and 238,570 respectively, even though the population of the US is much larger than Australia.
These figures demonstrate the international reach and audience of jewellermagazine.com. While it should be noted that all metrics are dynamic – they can vary on a daily/weekly basis – Jeweller’s position has been a long-term trend.
READER’S TIME SPENT on Jewellery websites
There are two metrics of time for websites: Time-on-Page and Daily-Time-on-Site. Both are important.
Time-on-Page is the average time a visitor spends on a page. It is calculated by the time difference between the moment a visitor lands on the page and when they move on to the next page.
As a general benchmark, experts say a ‘good’ average Time-on-Page for most websites is around 50 seconds, while it’s generally accepted that business websites usually achieve a higher average of around 80 seconds.
Alexa also measures Daily-Time-On-Site, which is the average time in minutes and seconds that a visitor spends on a website each day.
In other words, the more time spent on a website, the better the global ranking, especially for publishers.
Daily Time is therefore an important measure for a media business because it provides an insight into how well the content performs – the greater Daily Time the more the reader is engaged with the website and its content.
Conversely, the less Daily Time usually indicates a problem with the site, including too little and/or irrelevant content, poor UX (user experience), confused site structure, poorly written or targeted editorial, as well as low quality images and presentation.
Jeweller, with a Daily Time of 29.6 minutes, leads all b2b jewellery websites while a majority of other publications only managed between one and two minutes.
The table above indicates that Alexa had insufficient data for many publications due to low traffic and engagement.
Number of Pages Viewed by readers
The Page Views metric is relatively straightforward – it’s essentially the number of times someone visits any page on a site. A higher Page View indicates that more visitors open multiple links within a website, which means the visitor is more engaged in the content.
Page View benchmarks will differ from industry to industry and vary for the type of website, such as ecommerce versus a company site.
However, for most websites, especially news media sites, the goal is to keep users engaged without clicking off the page, or leaving the website. News websites, therefore, aim for reader engagement and that’s done by increased Page Views.
This means the content needs to nurture the visitors’ interest and ensure they return. More Page Views per session indicate highly attentive readers.
Conversely, the lower the Page Views metric the less time visitors stay on the site. A Page View count of two for a media site would not be seen as optimal.
The above table shows that Jeweller’s Page View count of 22 leads all jewellery trade publications.
Many websites record a Page View of 1, which means that the visitor reads one page only, and doesn’t click through to other pages/content.
BOUNCE RATE / PAGE ‘STICKINESS’
One of the most important measures – and least understood – is the metric known as Bounce Rate. For news media websites, a low Bounce Rate is integral to running a successful business.
The Bounce Rate calculation measures the percentage of visits to a site that consists of only one, single page view.
In other words, it indicates that a visitor has ‘landed’ on a page and immediately leaves (‘bounces off’) the website after a single page view, with no further reading (engagement).
Therefore, the higher the Bounce Rate percentage, the worse the site is ranked as it indicates low user engagement and/or poor UX.
It is generally accepted that an average (good) Bounce Rate is between 40–55 per cent, while 55–70 per cent is on the high (bad) side.
An optimal (very good) Bounce Rate for a b2b website would be in 25–40 per cent range. Alexa records Jeweller’s Bounce Rate at less than 23 per cent, which exceeds the optimal standard.
If a publication’s Bounce Rate is 90+ per cent, it means nearly every visitor ‘lands’ on the website, and immediately leaves (‘bounces off’) the website.
In terms of web analytics, a 90 per cent rate indicates a poor-performing website which is usually evidenced by, and coupled with, a low Page View count and low Daily Time.
Long-term trend
As previously noted, website statistics and performance are dynamic and can change daily and weekly subject to a number of variables. However, Jeweller’s global ranking trend, increased visitor traffic and readership have been on a steady, long-term rise for some time.
From the outset of COVID-19 at the beginning of 2020, publisher Angela Han adopted a counter-intuitive approach to the media during the global pandemic.
Unlike most international magazines and websites that went into ‘hibernation’ – or closed – Jeweller increased its publishing frequency during 2020, publishing twice per month rather than once.
In March 2020 Jeweller ranked 157,945 and the magazine’s high-quality editorial coverage and activity has been maintained for the past two years, which is reflected in jewellermagazine.com becoming the most popular jewellery industry website in the world with a ranking of 54,878 at 31 December 2021.
Han explained, “We believe people still value high-quality news reporting. Our success is reflected in the independent global metrics from external sources such as Alexa; the numbers clearly show that readers recognise great content and engaging presentation.
“They [Alexa stats] also show how a small publisher can dominate an international audience and market.”
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