Last Monday Biblio.com issued a press release stating that the site “has seen a steady decrease in traffic over the last few months…though, the bottom line conversions have increased”.
I actually like the business model of biblio.com better than the competing aggregators but a release like this is a little troublesome to me. This is not good news and makes me a little suspicious of their intentions.
Firstly, I have never heard a company celebrate a decrease in traffic to their website. A declining traffic trend greatly reduces your ability to land new customers who in turn can become repeat customers. You are cutting growth at the knees and we all know that in today’s marketplace; unfortunately, growth is king.
Look at it this way:
You are having a dinner party and 100 people come to the party and only 10 people eat, at your next party only 50 people come and 10 people eat, so yes your conversion rate goes from 10% to 20% but nothing has really changed. You are feeding the same 10 people. This strategy can only get you so far- if you want more people to eat you need to get more people to the party to increase your chances. Period.
Secondly, as we all know, timing is everything. If it truly is positive news for the company why release it on the Monday of Thanksgiving week, when releasing it then pretty much guarantees that the news has minimum impact? It is like the public company issuing bad news on a Friday afternoon with hopes the weekend can soften the blow to their stock price.
I also find it odd that as of 6 days after issuing the release it is not yet posted to the Press section of their website.
One possible reason I can see them doing this is that they are hoping to catch some company that wants to enter the online book aggregator business, and will buy them out to get a running start.
Keep in mind both Alibris and Abebooks have changed hands in the last few years and both recently hit the wires with news of expansion, Alibris in the UK and Abebooks in Spain, Abebooks also recently announced to the world the listing of the 100 millionth book on their site (we won’t get into whether this is true or not at this time). Biblio doesn’t want to miss the boat and needed to put something out there so the business big wigs know they are still alive.
Lastly, the Bookselling Online blog responded to the press release by also stating how important traffic is to the health of a website and interestingly enough received a response from Biblio’s marketing man, Kevin Donaldson. Donaldson talks about the difference between “generic” traffic and targeted traffic and how the generic traffic basically hits the home page and leaves, he also talks about the strain on the site’s infrastructure from these types of visitors.
If you have a majority of your traffic hitting the home page and leaving- the first question is why are they leaving? Is it the site design, content, colors etc., of course a percentage will leave no matter how effective the home page is but are they doing all they can to optimize the home page to capture and convert visitors?
If you are indeed getting so much traffic and need greater infrastructure you are in a good position to try and corral some investors to raise some equity or you can try and partner with a hosting or technology company who can handle your back end- in looking at the company’s partners on their website I do not see one technology partner and no matter how you cut it the Internet is a technology!
I do hope things work out for them because for now, out of the big 4 (Abebooks, Amazon, Alibris & Biblio), they are the most appropriate home for a true bookseller.