1. Ashley Friedlein Staff

    CEO at Econsultancy

    09 June 2008 10:05am

    Ashley Friedlein

    We're just thinking through what bookmarking options to put on our new site (the new version of this site, E-consultancy.com, due to be launched in August/September) to allow users to bookmark our pages - good for direct traffic and search optimisation.

    Looking at the current levels of traffic we get from the various ones out there, as well as our target market, and those used on similar sites, we think our current prioritised list should be:

    1. Digg
    2. StumbleUpon
    3. Del.icio.us
    4. Google
    5. Technorati
    6. Reddit
    7. Facebook
    8. Newsvine
    9. Furl
    10. NowPublic
    11. Slashdot
    12. Magnolia

    This differs in a number of ways from what we currently have e.g.
    - StumbleUpon isn't in our current list but we've noticed it is a big driver of traffic to our site (second after Del.icio.us)
    - Google Bookmarks is growing in importance and, of course, one suspects there are good SEO reasons to promote it
    - Reddit we find is falling off a bit
    - Yahoo! Web isn't worth it for us (too consumer-y)

    In reality the Top 4 above are far more important than the subsequent ones.

    We're also thinking through what the best user experience is to show these - how many to show, and how.

    Initially we're planning to use the AddThis widget which is an easy way to offer them all, and you can configure which get shown in the preview.

    Anyone else got any thoughts / experiences on which bookmarks have worked best for them, and how best to offer them (direct links vs. widget etc.)?

    Regards

    Ashley Friedlein
    CEO
    E-consultancy.com

  2. Susi Oneill

    director at digital consultant

    11 June 2008 11:02am

    Susi Oneill

    I would question why it's worth doing this.  Rather like 'email this page to a friend' - this rarely seemed to generate any traffic for sites - if users want to do that they'll fire up an email and send it.  Likewise, users have all their prefered bookmarking software loaded onto their browser and will happily click if they want to bookmark.  Maybe I'm wrong and it's a neat marketing trick that benefits users, or maybe you're teaching people to suck eggs...

    Susi O'Neill
    Digital Consultant
    www.digitalconsultant.co.uk

  3. Andrew Rogoff

    Founder at Resourceguruapp.com and StagsandHens.com

    11 June 2008 23:11pm

    Andrew Rogoff

    judging by the number of people that use these social bookmarking sites, i'd say that people like being taught how to suck eggs ;)

    On 11:02:40 11 June 2008 susioneill wrote:

    I would question why it's worth doing this.  Rather like 'email this page to a friend' - this rarely seemed to generate any traffic for sites - if users want to do that they'll fire up an email and send it.  Likewise, users have all their prefered bookmarking software loaded onto their browser and will happily click if they want to bookmark.  Maybe I'm wrong and it's a neat marketing trick that benefits users, or maybe you're teaching people to suck eggs...

    Susi O'Neill
    Digital Consultant
    www.digitalconsultant.co.uk

  4. Ashley Friedlein Staff

    CEO at Econsultancy

    12 June 2008 09:53am

    Ashley Friedlein

    Hi Susi

    Yes, you might be correct. Certainly I'd tend to agree with you about the 'email this page to a friend' feature and the same could be true for bookmarking.

    Just possibly it might serve to remind people that they might want to bookmark something and, by making it really easy to do so, might make a small % difference in the number of bookmarks made?

    Ashley

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