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Agency Based Discussion => Alamy.com => Topic started by: BelIblis on January 11, 2013, 07:32

Title: Customer Search Activity
Post by: BelIblis on January 11, 2013, 07:32
Hi,

Out of curiosity, I had a look at the "Customer Search Activity" on ALL images (not just my images) on Alamy for the past 12 months. Not many sales there at all....

For example: there were only about 40 searches related to "Tikal" (famous ruins in Guatemala, UNESCO World Heritage), and only 4 sales.
Searches related to "Grand Canyon": only 8 sales in the past year!

Surely this can't be true – Alamy wouldn't be able to stay in business with that bad a sales performance!

Quoting Alamy: "If you are contemplating which images to submit to Alamy, you can use this tool to research how often a subject is requested and how many sales, zooms and views were recorded."

Well.... not much of a tool if they don't show us all their data, no?
Title: Re: Customer Search Activity
Post by: aspp on January 11, 2013, 07:42
It's a snapshot of selected users' searches. Not all searches. The same as your own views and zooms.
Title: Re: Customer Search Activity
Post by: BelIblis on January 11, 2013, 07:45
I thought it would be... still, a bit annoying considering Alamy say "This tool allows you to see all searches from customers who have spent money on Alamy within a specified date range."
Title: Re: Customer Search Activity
Post by: ShadySue on January 11, 2013, 07:48
It's a pretty useless tool, but it's deliberately kept that way to stop people from copying successful images.

If you read their information more closely, you'll see that views are only recorded from their top customers (presumably that's also those with the deepest discount). The zooms means that they clicked on the image page, from way back when there wasn't a hover/zoom featurette. Now I think the hover is more or less the same magnification as the zoom, (not a full zoom), the only point in zooming is maybe to check if there are more details in the description (which doesn't show on hover).
Sales are only recorded if they result from that visit. If the pic is lightboxed and bought later, the sale does't show on the chart.

Some Alamy suppliers really like the feature, but I find it pretty useless.
Title: Re: Customer Search Activity
Post by: ShadySue on January 11, 2013, 07:52
I thought it would be... still, a bit annoying considering Alamy say "This tool allows you to see all searches from customers who have spent money on Alamy within a specified date range."

I can't find the page that explains Alamy Measures, all I can find is a video.
I know that the information was somewhere in writing, I just can't lay my eyes on it.
Title: Re: Customer Search Activity
Post by: BelIblis on January 11, 2013, 08:25
I thought it would be... still, a bit annoying considering Alamy say "This tool allows you to see all searches from customers who have spent money on Alamy within a specified date range."

I can't find the page that explains Alamy Measures, all I can find is a video.
I know that the information was somewhere in writing, I just can't lay my eyes on it.

It's on the actual Customer Search Activity page, right next to the results.

And yes, I would think it IS a rather useless tool given the fact that even "high profile" destinations such as Grand Canyon & Tikal show hardly any sales.
Title: Re: Customer Search Activity
Post by: ShadySue on January 11, 2013, 08:30
I thought it would be... still, a bit annoying considering Alamy say "This tool allows you to see all searches from customers who have spent money on Alamy within a specified date range."

I can't find the page that explains Alamy Measures, all I can find is a video.
I know that the information was somewhere in writing, I just can't lay my eyes on it.

It's on the actual Customer Search Activity page, right next to the results.

And yes, I would think it IS a rather useless tool given the fact that even "high profile" destinations such as Grand Canyon & Tikal show hardly any sales.

Hmmm, that column says what I remember:

"What are “Sales”?
The number of sales we can reliably attribute to a search term for the time period specified. Sales data is not comprehensive because the nature of customer activity means that we cannot link all sales to search terms. "


However, I see it also says:
"This tool allows you to see all searches from customers who have spent money on Alamy within a specified date range."
Which is not what I've generally read; I've read it is only their top buyers whose views count. Hmmm
Title: Re: Customer Search Activity
Post by: mtkang on January 11, 2013, 08:56
do u guys think it could be only direct digital purchase through websites will be counted as sales in the activity?

I notice alamy giving a lot of discounts or sales deal lower price that listed price on the ecommerce..so i guess they are dealing with a lot of customers in different way.