Jason Revzon
VP, Taunton Interactive, The Taunton Press
Revzon’s focus on building a visual Web dashboard and attracting qualified sources of traffic brought huge growth to Taunton Interactive.
Unlike most AD All-Stars, Jason Revzon didn’t begin his career in magazine circulation or audience development. His previous gigs included a business development position in Lifetime Television’s digital sector and an interactive position in the Tribune’s broadcast department. But when he joined enthusiast publisher The Taunton Press in May of last year, he became responsible for making sure the company’s Web properties developed as much quality audience as it possibly could.
“When I joined The Taunton Press, some things were apparent,” he says. “For example, the mechanics of their sites and domain names. Their sites were invisible to advertisers. So I really wanted to focus on getting the sites to come up higher on the Google search rankings and collecting great statistics and analytics.”
Revzon accomplish his goals by “digging” into actionable metrics from Google Analytics, CheetahMail and other partners. His team also spent one month putting together a new visual dashboard, auditing all of the sites’ page tags, and making sure that “the data matched reality.”
Revzon then started to address the high bounce rates on search engine traffic. “The number of searches was impressive, but the number of people who bounced, or saw one page and left, was too high,” he says. “By tweaking each page, segmenting visitors by behavior and helping turn single page visits into longer sessions, we were able to retain more of the people who were just stopping by long-term.”
Revzon’s next task was to grow qualified sources of traffic for Taunton’s sites. “Our initial focus was to increase the activity of our non-marketing email database by re-segmenting and sending editorial e-newsletters more often on high-performing subjects to the people most likely to act, and making sure the promoted content would pay off in multiple page views and not just be a dead-end,” he says.
As a result of his efforts, Taunton Interactive has grown its traffic 130 percent year-over- year, with 1.8 million unique visitors in January to its various Web sites, including FineCooking.com, CraftStylish.com and FineWoodworking.com.
In terms of how audience developers can utilize the Web, Revzon says the possibilities are endless. “It allows us to say ‘I know’ instead of ‘I think,’” he says. “It can give you a much deeper insight into where a dollar can go further and creates a more holistic relationship with your customers.”
VITAL STATS
Since Jason Revzon joined Taunton Interactive last year, it has grown its traffic 130 percent year-over-year, with 1.8 million unique visitors in January to its various Web sites, including FineCooking.com, CraftStylish.com and FineWoodworking.com.
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