The new AB website is still earning prizes, more than a year after its launch. Following 2 CMS awards and The Jury Prize of the Site van het Jaar 2008 elections, this week we also received the Usability Award in the category 'most user-friendly corporate or commercial website'.
We're pretty proud of the results achieved by the site too: the number of unique visitors/day has increased by at least 45% (from 4,185 to 5,955), visitors also stay on the website longer and there are more page-shows (indicating 'discovery'), and the natural integration with major network sites like Facebook and Twitter clearly delivers results, if we can go by the increase in visitors generated via these sites. Also, last but not least: the number of unique viewers of ABtv films has increased from 25,000 to 750,000 (!). 20% of the viewers watches streamed concerts live, 80% does that on-demand.
Absolute headliners in the LIVE stream are Moby (5,400 unique LIVE viewers online) and Arsenal (4,900 unique liver viewers) followed by Bloc Party (2,000). Absolute headliner in the ARCHIVE is Triggerfinger, who have already been viewed more than 31, 000 times. El Tattoo Del Tigre and Sarah Bettens are also extremely popular, just as Bart Peeters and Moby. More than 65 ABsessions have been recorded in one year, from the likes of Skunk Anansie, Lady Linn, Milow and Spinvis.
All this also means that the website (in combination with our newsletter) has become, more than ever, the AB's most important channel of information and also sales. 70% of tickets are purchased online. As such, AB has developed into a medium (see too AB In-house Photographer, ABradio, ABtv, …) that increasingly serves as promotional platform for the more than 500 performers who are presented here yearly.
More numbers can be found in the presentation below: