Mark, RK's numbers, as I understand it from their explanation, measure the unique users who visited a given "Domain" during the month (I think they adjust for the length of the month too). It is not a page hit count. In fact, since the Fools brought up the term "mindshare", it seems to me that RK's numbers might be a pretty good indicator of that intangible.
If fewer people visited the site, it's a good bet that either fewer people bought or fewer new people surfed in to check it out. That would tell me that either sales are weaker or their advertising isn't as effective at bringing in new potential customers, or both. April, the last month I've seen from RK, may have been a weak month for book sales in general (I recall that something about BKS' last Q report lead me to think that was possible), their advertising may be losing its effectiveness or competition may be making inroads (isn't that about when BKS started gearing up promotion?). The latter two would be bad things in a "mindshare" race.
To be fair, I should also add that it's possible fewer unique users visited Amazon, but they made numerous or bigger purchases during the month so sales could climb anyway. Problem is it still implies fewer new visitors and I have a hard time seeing that as good.
Regards,
Bob |
