Evidence of meeting #80 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was casl.
A recording is available from Parliament.
11:40 a.m.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
I would like to go back to Mr. Jowhari's question about the evaluation based on the number of hits on your website. Are there any other metrics by which you evaluate the success of the website? I asked you a similar question before, but I want to drill down on that.
11:40 a.m.
Director General, Small Business Branch, Small Business, Tourism and Marketplace Services, Department of Industry
I think it's the blend of the website and also our Facebook page linking the two. Again, as I said, it really is much more of a conduit piece, and I think how many people are passing through from us on to the spam reporting centre is another good indicator of people who are making the follow-on links.
Again, it's meant to be a flow-on piece where the real insights about whether people are finding value on it are when they reach out to the regulators.
11:40 a.m.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Thank you.
So your position is that your job is mostly awareness-raising and you're doing it for both consumers and businesses. Is that correct?
11:40 a.m.
Director General, Small Business Branch, Small Business, Tourism and Marketplace Services, Department of Industry
Yes.
11:40 a.m.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
You talked about 4,000 regular visitors and then how in January 2014 it made a major jump. What happened in January 2014?
11:40 a.m.
Director General, Small Business Branch, Small Business, Tourism and Marketplace Services, Department of Industry
That's when the regulatory framework brought the law into force.
11:40 a.m.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
So when it came into force on spam, suddenly there was a major jump, and you're up to about 25,000 a month now.
11:40 a.m.
Director General, Small Business Branch, Small Business, Tourism and Marketplace Services, Department of Industry
Yes. It sort of peaked at 415,000 for those couple of months.
11:40 a.m.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Just those couple of months when it came in, and then it held up.
11:40 a.m.
Director General, Small Business Branch, Small Business, Tourism and Marketplace Services, Department of Industry
Yes.
11:40 a.m.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Do you know how many of those are new visitors versus return?
11:40 a.m.
Director, Office of Consumers Affairs, Department of Industry
What we can get in terms of web metrics is a count of unique visitors versus visits.
11:45 a.m.
Director, Office of Consumers Affairs, Department of Industry
The numbers we gave you are unique visitors. You can go 30 times or 100 times in the month and we'll count you only once.
11:45 a.m.
Director, Office of Consumers Affairs, Department of Industry
We're not able to say if they're returning from the previous month. I can just say whether in this month you've visited more than once.
11:45 a.m.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
There are a number of metrics that you can have for a website to tell you how good you're doing. I assume you have them. These are things like how long someone stays on the site, for example. Do you have that?
11:45 a.m.
Director, Office of Consumers Affairs, Department of Industry
I don't have that with me, but we could get that.
11:45 a.m.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
You could get that? Okay.
There's something called a “bounce rate”, too. Do you know what that is? If I just come and I leave right away, it means I wasn't really interested.
11:45 a.m.
Director, Office of Consumers Affairs, Department of Industry
Yes: it's about how long you're on.
11:45 a.m.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
If the website, the document that you spoke about, is your main teaching method, do you know how many people land at a site for consumers? There's a consumer part and then there's a business part. Do you have that as well?
