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Case Study

Leading publisher uses Hitwise to tailor offline content to online customers

"Hitwise helps us avoid guessing what kind of content we should be developing to meet constantly changing consumer needs."

Gabe Vehovsky, EVP Strategy and Research, HowStuffWorks.com

HowStuffWorks.com leverages Hitwise data to improve its content development efforts through an examination of evidence-based consumer demand patterns.

The Challenge

With exclusive digital rights to a virtual library of offline book titles written by leading publishers, Gabe Vehovsky says “a major challenge is to restructure the offline content and develop unique content features that are designed specifically for online consumption.”

Another task, according to Vehovsky, is to use empirical consumer behavior as a basis for finding “better ways to prioritize and guide the digitization of offline content.”

The Solution

In response to these challenges, Vehovsky says, "We leverage the Hitwise Competitive Intelligence service, specifically Search Intelligence™ and Lifestyle data, to help us determine what content is important to customers now, and which demographic and social segments are likely to be drawn to specific content subjects". To do this, the team at HowStuffWorks.com continually use Hitwise to monitor search behavior and match demographic profi les to content on competitive websites. After this information is scrutinized, these consumer insights are turned into "tactics and strategies for reaching new audiences and improving our end-user experience," said Vehovsky.

The Benefits

Hitwise contributes to the strategy and research process by helping HowStuffWorks.com "avoid guessing what kind of content we should be developing to meet constantly changing consumer needs," says Vehovsky. Since the company continually challenges itself to improve ways to bring new product and content to market, Vehovsky declares that with access to Hitwise he is able to “streamline and simplify” content development efforts, and that his goal is to replace ambiguous “I think so” statements within the content planning and development process with definitive “I know so” statements.