Economics of the Web: IE9 Users that Pin Huffington Post Spend 49% more Time on Site

We?ve previously covered our philosophy of putting sites at the center. This starts with the point of view that users go to their browser to visit sites, not for the browser itself. The browser should give sites the tools to build more engaging user experiences without getting in the way.

This has also informed the approach we have taken with partners. We believe that successfully delivering on this philosophy should ultimately translate into measurable results. Throughout the IE9 journey, we have worked deeply with partners to understand how they think about their experiences and which metrics they use to drive their business.

DELIVERING RESULTS WITH SITES AT THE CENTER

Here are some of the results that we have seen from partners that we have profiled recently:

• Huffington Post built a news experience taking advantage of Pinned Sites in IE9. Overall, they saw an 11% increase in page views and 14% lower bounce rate. More interesting they found that users that users that pinned HuffPost spent 49% more time on the site.
• hi5 built a social gaming experience taking advantage of Jump Lists in IE9. Overall, Hi5 saw that pinned users viewed 15% more pages. These users also became much more active responding to 3x more social requests (like new friends, game invites, messages).

We think of these results as early, but positive, indicators of whether we are delivering on the philosophy.

ECONOMICS OF THE WEB

As Internet Explorer 9 has reached Release Candidate and is beginning to see increased uptake, now is a good time to drill deeper. We will share a series of blogs that focus on the economics of the web and the impact that partners are seeing with IE9, HTML5 and related technologies. We will also share best practices and code samples across sites that take different approaches.

There are three main areas that we will focus in upcoming blogs:

• Value per User ? Create compelling site experiences that build repeat engagement and loyalty
• Number of Users ? Bring new customers to your experiences through promotion, offers, and discovery of features
• Cost to Implement ? Be easy to design, build, test, and sustain on a stable platform

We welcome your feedback and hearing about your own experiences. Learn about Pinned Sites with IE9 here.

Lauren Conrad Arielle Kebbel Jessica Paré Leelee Sobieski Teri Hatcher