Pan-European electronics site, Electronic Specifier, started as a web site for new electronic products, offering opportunities for mailing list hire and e-newsletter advertising. The publisher launched an English-language digital magazine in January 2010, and a French version in February 2010. Then electronicengineeringjobs.euappeared in May. In March 2010, Electronic Specifier Design will appear for the first time, with a focus on design articles, as the title suggests. The publisher now claims market leadership for publications of this type in Europe, with an average of 272,000 page views per month from January to September 2010, and citing EE Times Europe, EPN and EDN Europe as competitors. The relative leadership with respect to page views is confirmed by checking out the numbers at Google.com/AdPlanner, although the total number of views is somewhat lower than claimed. However, some of the other sites seem to have significantly more visitors. Whatever the reasons for the anomaly, Radio-electronics.com beats them all. It’s published from the UK, but only offers advertisers a website advertising option because the founder refuses to allow his readers to be hit with e-mail marketing material. A Google analysis appears to be contradict Electronic Specifier’s claim to leadership in page impressions. According to Google, Radio-electronics.com now has 340,00 page impressions per month versus Electronic Specifier’s 150,000. The different ways in which site statistics are measured, and the lack of information regarding visitor quality, rather than quantity, still makes worthwhile comparisons of web sites challenging. Perhaps the easiest solution is just to follow Digi-key. It’s a company that seems to know what it’s doing online and the site now has 1.6 million visitors per month (based on estimated cookies), although most of these will be to place orders, rather than read about technology, so perhaps that’s yet another unfair comparison.
About the Author: Bob Jones
Bob founded Publitek in 1998. He has over 25 years’ experience in running technology PR and marketing communications agencies, following earlier careers in broadcast engineering and electronic component marketing. Bob read Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the University of Bangor, Wales, and has an MA in Marketing. He was elected a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing in 1996. He is a member of the IEEE and the IET and in 2015 was named as one of "The 100 most influential tech agency PR executives globally" by the Hot Topics community of technology leaders.