This is a school project. The site I'm analyzing is MuckBootCompany.com

1. 2017 Fall
introduction to web publishing
Sujung Yun
Analysis of Web Site Popularity and Traffic:
The original Muck Boot Company Analysis
Web Site Overview
• General Company Information:
“Always comfortable no matter where life takes you” The original Muck boot
company founded in 1999 with the idea; the most comfortable boot and high-
performance footwear for use in messy and tough condition. General product lines
vary choice over 60 styles for farm, city or outdoors with 100% waterproof. “Always
waterproof” The slogan in the Our story section highlights the quality of the company
boot. As the website has a high-quality video that describes the original Muck boot
company, the content illustrates the company’s overall personality. #MUCKLIFE is
the official blog of the company. Needless to say, hashtag is trending now by finding
same contents on social media. More and more company uses hashtag, for example,
Red Bull - #PutACanOnit and Coca Cola - #ShareaCoke. #MUCKLIFE recently
released the article about POP kids picks: check out the company new product line of
character boots with high quality for kids. In addition, they share the customer
experience with live photos in the blog. The official blog has 5 contents: POP kids
picks, Extreme Hunting boots for women, Life in the rainy states, Fun things to do in

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the rain and Mountain Biking tip. Most of the contents were up to date, but the blog
may need more news for users and potential users. Besides the original Muck boot
website, there are approximately 50 more websites sell the Muck boots. Typically,
Dick’s sporting goods, Walmart, Dillard’s, eBay, Sears and other outdoor websites.
The official website may not the lowest price; however, the widest range of choice to
buy the product. After all, the official website does not have enough information
about their personality, the users may feel the content about the company is a little
short. It may better to have more contents in about page and blog to entertain users
with more information. As well as, it may essential to demonstrate the company
personality stronger in Our story page.
• Content Analysis:
Looking on the website, the first content popped up was discount coupon for new
users. If the users decide to purchase the items, it may attract users, but the pop up is

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not the best for users. The website has quality contents and keeps entertaining users
with high quality images and videos (1)
. Feature area shows slides of different
collection of Muck boots. The main page seems uniformed, and has variety of
category to choose. In addition, the page achieved hierarchy which focuses on the
feature area slides show to the bottom. The navigation bar is divided by gender, age
and occasions or activities. The factors may make easy to navigate even customer do
not have a knowledge about the boots. Each navigation section has more option when
we hover it, the site has wide range of choice navigation bar to sub-navigations, for
example, individual section offers new products, specific collection, and best choice
for needs. Overall price range from approximately $15 t-shirts to $190 high quality
boots for women’s product. Men’s products were more expensive up to $220, but
overall price was about the same. Compare to adult’s lines, kids’ product was
cheaper, and the range was from $10 t-shirts to $80 adventure boots. In addition to
product lines, all the contents have clean layout and easy to navigate to describe the
product (2)
. From “Understanding the Principles of Successful Web Site Design”,
body and content should be traditionally designed in terms of legibility and clarity.
Since users spend most of time on the content page, content page may affect users
significantly. In this case, the original Muck boot company content follows the
traditional design idea of legibility and clarity. The company used san-serif for their
website typography; usually san-serif has low legibility in smaller text, but the
company used pretty big font size to solve the legibility. Heading were divided by
bold and big font size to summarize the key point. Detailed page has lots of contents
to draw attention from users. The company displays the product images in different
directions with a clean background, product name with a bold and huge text, product

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code in smaller size, reviews, different color option button to click, add and wish list
options. Moreover, unique option on the page was that users may compare between
products they are looking for. People usually consider one product from the other,
this option may help customer. Not only Compare button, but also Size guide helps
users to find right size. Specially, it would be helpful for people from other countries
who may use other measurement for shoes. On the bottom of the page, there is
#MUCKBOOTS gallery (3)
, this option helps users to look actual photography from
other users who purchased the boots.

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From the textbook, the footer is significant part of web design by performing
users and search engine optimization. The footer contains footer navigation including
customer services elements, for example, from contact us to discount section. This
links to the main pages not only work for users but also improves the search engine
ranking because of the Search engine optimization. What’s more, nowadays social
media roles significantly in our society, the company display social media icons. The
Muck boot company was a big social media user, for example, they responded in a
second when users send a message through the Facebook; they even have a YouTube
channel to demonstrate the boots information; on Instagram, they posted beautiful
picture about the boots. On the bottom of the footer, the company shows their other
brands to look at. In conclusion, the footer has clean layout with light gray
background and typography.

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• Competing Site:
Hunter boots company is a competing site, this is because the original Muck boot
company and the Hunter boots have a similar product lines and personality. From
Heritage page on Hunter boots official site, the company describes the story of
company so far in detail. Overall, Hunter has richer history of innovation compare to
the Muck boot company, for example, they provide history even in the world war II
and the longer history; Hunter established in 1856. While the original Muck boot
company has two sub navigation to describe their personality such as story and blog
page, Hunter has more options to navigate the page. The story section is about their
history stated above, and second section is “Hunter Now” which shows their
collection fashion shows since 2014, their international festivals information and
other activities they support. Last section is “the making of an icon” which represents
the Hunter boots spirit: intelligence, craftsmanship, and protection. Hunter product
lines are variety choice from Wellington boots: knee-length waterproof boots to
sneakers. The Muck boot and Hunter boots have a similarity in terms of product of
high quality waterproof boots. However, Hunter boots have more choices, for
examples, rain boots, ankle boots, sneakers, slides, sandals, accessories, and outwears
compare to Muck boot. Price range is higher than the original Muck boot company,
overall prices for boots were $100 to $500 with the highest price. One thing users
may enjoy about the website is that they offer a fit finder widget, which convert
popular shoes brands size to Hunter boots size. Also, they have a small feedback
widget to get a feedback from user of the website (4)
.

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There are some elements the Muck boot company may benchmark. First, As the
Muck boot company has competitive price range, they can use the price as marketing
strategy. In fact, consumers are sensitive on the price. Secondly, Hunter has more

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information about their personality and campaigns. On the other hand, the original
Muck boot company has a lot smaller information. Lastly, as we are in a college,
Hunter boots provides 15% discounts for students. This may affect student consumer
significantly, even though Hunter is a higher price range but the general waterproof
boots were similar price to Muck boot company.

10. 10
Popularity Analysis
Popularity means the number of sites that link to your site and the
quality of those sites. To analysis the popularity, the quantity and quality
are big roles. In popularity Analysis, we are looking backlinks and
referring domains. Backlinks is links from other sites to our site. Referring
Domains is websites or web address. Also, more backlinks and better links
make it easy to rank higher mainly in Google.
• Linked Analysis:
Total
Backlinks
No. Of Referring
Domain
Average
70.0 K 588 119 Links / Site
70.7 K 1.5 K 47 Links / Site
o Analysis of Link Quantity:
The comparison chart shown above illustrates the link quantity.
Firstly, the muck boot company official site has 70,000 total links and the
hunter boots official site has 70,700 total backlinks. The number between
the sites are pretty similar just looking at the total number of backlinks.
However, the Muck boot company has 588 referring domain compare to
1,500 referring domain from the Hunter boots. Since single “IP” can host

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several websites, 588 different sites are linking 70,000 times to the original
Muck boot company website. Too many links per site may sign of fake
links. In addition, the Muck boot company average links per site is more
than twice of Hunter boots average. To summarize, The Muck boot
company has more links from fewer sites.
o Analysis of Link Quality:
To evaluate the link quality, there is an example of good quality links. For
example, the links from news sites, recognizable brands, and from sources with
restricted domains such as .gov .edu .mil are considered the best link quality. The
links from family sites or partner sites, this is not great but ordinary links. The
Muck boot company and Hunter boots top 5 referring domains are listed above.

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To analysis the link quality, information about high trust and page score may help
compare those two websites. First, Muck boot company Top Level Domain
distribution has 77% from .com, 4% from .net, and 3% from .org. Furthermore,
the highest root domain, which is honeywellsafety.com, got 28 for domain score
and 36 for trust score. The second highest root domain, sperian.com, got 16 for
domain score and 18 for trust score. Overall domain score range is from 1 to 28
the highest, trust score range is from 0 to 36. The Muck boot company link
quality is not great because the domain score and trust score are under 40 and
links are partner site according to Small SEO tools.
Top level domain distribution for Hunter boots shows 65% from .com, 8%
from .uk, 3% of .net and 2% from .de, .org, .es, .ca, and 15% of other. In addition,
referring domain score is higher than the Muck boot company. The range of
domain score for Hunter boots is from 0 to 66 and trust score is from 0 to 72.
Even though the range is much higher than the Muck boot company, the average

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is not huge difference. The original Muck boot company average domain score is
15 and Hunter boots scores 15.7, on the other hand, trust score is opposite result
from the domain score. The muck boot company scores 21.9 but Hunter boots
scores 17.5. Overall score seems low for the muck boot company but average
shows that the Muck boot company has more trust referring domain site.

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Traffic Analysis
• Visit Analysis:
Muck Hunter
SIMILAR WEB
AVG Visit (March – Aug) 109,000 566,000
AVG Visit (March – June) 81,250 455,000
QUANCAST
AVG Monthly People
(Sep – June)
42,367 69,911
AVG Monthly People
(Mar - June)
40,788 50,785
o Overview:
Web traffic is a metric or data users shared that determined by how many
visitors are on a website and how many visitors visit webpage. Higher traffic
indicates data is in high usage. Higher visitors cause higher usage of data. Table
above illustrates traffic of Muck boot company and Hunter. Overall, Hunter boots
has much higher both visitors and people. In detail, average visit data on Similar
Web from march 2017 to august 2017 for Hunter boots is more than 5 times to
Muck boot company metrics. Also, average monthly people from September 2016

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to June 2017 for Hunter boots approximately 1.6 times more than Muck boot
company. Visits and people, which are interpreted as unique visitor, have a
different feature, this is why the table shows different data for each category.
First, visits mean that how many times the users come. For example, one person
comes to the site several times, each visit counts for the visits. On the other hand,
people or unique visitor are how many people come to the site. In the case, even
though one person visits the website several times, it only counts for a single
person. Comparing those two data may conjecture web traffic and revisit.
o MuckBootCompany.com Traffic & Trends:
Graph from Similar Web shows the muck boot company traffic and trends
well. Muck boot company has a sharp high traffic in August, April and March.
Specially, the visits were 290K in August, which doubled the average visit. The
fact, why the traffic increases in August and April, is that people are looking for
rain boots August because of weather condition and hunting season; April is a
spring Turkey hunting. To summarize the graph metrics, hunting seasons and

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rainy weather affect higher traffic and people tend to look for boots on a Muck
boot website.
Another source from Quantcast shows traffic of people. The highest traffic
in November to December, like traffic from Similar web this traffic is also
affected by weather and seasons. September to December is fall turkey, archery
and deer hunting season and snow may affect users to come to the site as well.
Comparing those two sources, average visits March to June is 81,250 and average
monthly people is 40,788. People who come to the website visited approximately
twice.

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o HunterBoots.com Traffic & Trends:
Hunter boots total visits graph from Similar Web seems steady compare to
Muck boot company. The company has a such high traffic but July and August
have a higher traffic compare to another month. The North America Monsoon,
general rainy season in United States, occurs from July to September. Since the
hunter boots have rain boots, July and August are the highest traffic month in the
year.
The other source from
Quantcast, indicates from
November to December has
the highest traffic, doubled
average monthly people.
Comparing two graphs above
from March to June, Hunter boots has 455,000 average visits and 50,785 average

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monthly people. People who visit the Hunter boots website, tend to revisit 8 times
more.
o Google Shopping Insights Trends:
Lately, there is a lot more rain, the phenomenon makes people to purchase
more waterproof items like rain boots, rain coats, and umbrellas. Google analytic
program explains interests of rain boots and Hunter boots company over last year.
The data shows that national interest in hunter boots company grew up to 50%
because of the more rain. From June 2015, the interest grew rapidly over last year.
Since Hunter boots and Muck boot have a similar product lines, this may apply to
Muck boot company as well. Specifically, California area increased rainfall 12
times more than previous year, the more people were searching for Hunter boots.

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o Visit Data Analysis: Similarities and Differences:
Here is a comparison data of total visits between Muck boot company and
Hunter boots. Obviously, Hunter boots has much higher visits. Comparing total
visits of two websites, Hunter is more than twice as higher than Muck boot
company. The Hunter has a higher traffic that visitors share their data more than
on the Muck boot company site. The trends between those sites are similar
because of close relationship with weather. As Google Analytic shows that the
higher rain rate, the more people tend to search rain boots and the data matches
with the increase of Hunter boots company. To be more specifically, both two
company websites have higher visitors and people and it leads to the higher
traffic. Therefore, there is gap between those amounts of data they get from each
site, but the shapes seem similar. Also, Muck boot company has a low revisit
compare to Hunter boots. People who visited Hunter tend to come back to the site
later three times more than Muck boot company. Since the Muck boot company
has a lower traffic, it may helpful to make the site that people want to revisit.

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• Engagement Analysis:
Muck Hunter AVG
Bounce Rate 24.85 30.55 40.5
Page Views per
Visit
3.05 6.26 4.6
Average
Visit Duration 67 S 228 S 190.4 S
o Overview:
Engagement rate indicates how visitors are connected on site. To make the
website successful, it is important to make sure visitors are engaged on the site. To
analysis engagement, there are several categories to look at: Bounce Rate, Page views
per visit and Average visit duration. First, bounce rate is visitors only visit a single
page. Therefore, if bounce rate is low, page views per visit and visit duration may
increase.
o MuckBootCompany.com Engagement Data:
Muck boot company has lower visit duration, pages per visit and low bounce
rate. Although bounce rate is low, engagement may not be high because of low visit
duration and pages per visit. Compare to average visit duration, Muck boot visit

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duration is so low that this may be reasons why the engagement seems to be low for
the site. Also, pages per visit are a little bit lower than average. Bounce rate is lower
than average. As a single page cannot process purchase, bounce rate on retail site may
be a big role. When users decide to buy items on Muck boot site, the process is on
same site; some sites lead to PayPal or shoptify. Contents on Muck boot site are so
little that nothing to explore. This may affect the average visit duration and pages per
visit.
o HunterBoots.com Engagement Data:
Hunter boots seems to have a high engagement. In detail, Hunter boots has a higher
visit duration even higher than the average. Hunter boots website does have more
contents compare to Muck boot company. Pages per visit also have high engagement,
people tend to view 6 pages per visit. Bounce rate is moderate compare to average.
o Web Averages:
Web averages indicate the
metrics of an average website
but it can vary in terms of
business. For retail sites, 20 –
40% bounce rate is average
compare to simple landing
pages have 70 – 90% bounce
rate. According to MarTech pop-up ads, many factors, surveys, high ranking page on
irrelevant keywords, Emails, can cause higher bounce rates. Furthermore, average
page views per visit is 4.6 and average visit duration is 190.4 seconds.

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o Engagement Analysis: Similarities and Differences:
Both two websites have about average rate of bounce rate, which is 20 – 40% on
retail sites. There is Email ad only on Muck boot site, but the bounce rate is lower
than Hunter, which does not have ads on their site. Compare to Hunter boots, muck
boot company has lower visit duration. Users stay three times longer on Hunter boots
site than Muck boot company site. Muck boot company has much less contents on
their websites and pages. Pages per visit are
twice as higher on Hunter boots. Hunter boots
offers recommendation when users click the
items, therefore there is a chance to look at other
pages. On the other hand, Muck boot company
does not have enough links on a page to explore
other pages.

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o Recommendation to improve Engagement
Analyzing Muck boot company official site, there is enormous potential to make
the website more engaged. To improve Engagement, the company should work on the
visit duration, which is much lower than average and competing site. Looking at
Muck boot company website, there are not enough contents to entertain users and
keep the customers to introduce their product lines. First, adding “recommendation
field” to give more choice for users. Many websites already have the feature that
helps customer to look at their items not searching items that other websites have.
This feature is great for users that they do not need to find similar product lines
themselves. Since Muck boot company has a feature that “Compare”, adding the
“recommendation field” would improve the “Compare” feature that similar products
automatically shows what the users would like.

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Second recommendation is “Improve the description part” and reviews.
Muck boot company product lines pages have text descriptions and a few
reviews. There are some customers that cares about the actual reviews
before they purchase items. Amazon have refined by
reviews to filter out the items does not have a good
review. As users have to scroll all the way to the
bottom to look at the product description part, it
would be great to put their description under the product images to see
directly without scrolling.

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To entertain users, more and more websites are using video description.
Some websites combine review and description by making videos of the
customers who purchased and explain about the product lines. To improve
Engagement, there are more option to follow such as deleting the pop-up
ads and speed up page load.
In conclusion, analyzing all the information in terms of Content,
Popularity, Traffic and Engagement is a way to improve their websites
successfully.

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• WORKS CITED
“WOMEN'S NEW ARRIVALS.” MUCK US, WWW.MUCKBOOTCOMPANY.COM/.
ACCESSED 9 SEPT. 2017.
OFFICIAL HUNTER BOOTS SITE |SHOP RAINBOOTS,
WWW.HUNTERBOOTS.COM/US/EN_US/. ACCESSED 9 SEPT. 2017.
MILLER, BRIAN G. ABOVE THE FOLD: UNDERSTANDING THE PRINCIPLES OF
SUCCESSFUL WEB SITE DESIGN. CINCINNATI, OH, HOW BOOKS, 2011.
“DOMAIN OVERVIEW "HUNTERBOOTS.COM" THE REPORT PROVIDES THE DATA
ON THE CURRENT VISIBILITY ESTATE OF THE QUERIED
DOMAIN.” HUNTERBOOTS.COM - DOMAIN OVERVIEW REPORT,
WWW.SEMRUSH.COM/INFO/HUNTERBOOTS.COM?DB=US. ACCESSED 9 SEPT. 2017.
“DOMAIN OVERVIEW "MUCKBOOTCOMPANY.COM" THE REPORT PROVIDES THE
DATA ON THE CURRENT VISIBILITY ESTATE OF THE QUERIED
DOMAIN.” MUCKBOOTCOMPANY.COM - DOMAIN OVERVIEW REPORT,
WWW.SEMRUSH.COM/INFO/MUCKBOOTCOMPANY.COM?DB=US. ACCESSED 9
SEPT. 2017.
“BACKLINK CHECKER.” SMALLSEOTOOLS, SMALLSEOTOOLS.COM/BACKLINK-
CHECKER/. ACCESSED 9 SEPT. 2017.
“COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE TOOL.” SIMILARWEB.COM,
PRO.SIMILARWEB.COM/#/WEBSITE/WORLDWIDE-
OVERVIEW/HUNTERBOOTS.COM/*/999/28D?WEBSOURCE=TOTAL. ACCESSED 10
SEPT. 2017.
MUCKBOOTCOMPANY.COM AUDIENCE INSIGHTS - QUANTCAST,
WWW.QUANTCAST.COM/MUCKBOOTCOMPANY.COM. ACCESSED 10 SEPT. 2017.
HUNTERBOOTS.COM AUDIENCE INSIGHTS - QUANTCAST,
WWW.QUANTCAST.COM/HUNTERBOOTS.COM. ACCESSED 10 SEPT. 2017.
“MUCKBOOTCOMPANY.COM WEBSITE TRAFFIC AND
INFORMATION.” TRAFFICESTIMATE.COM - WEBSITE PROFILES,
WWW.TRAFFICESTIMATE.COM/MUCKBOOTCOMPANY.COM. ACCESSED 10 SEPT.
2017.
“HUNTERBOOTS.COM WEBSITE TRAFFIC AND
INFORMATION.” TRAFFICESTIMATE.COM - WEBSITE PROFILES,
WWW.TRAFFICESTIMATE.COM/HUNTERBOOTS.COM. ACCESSED 10 SEPT. 2017.
“SINGIN' IN THE RAIN WITH HUNTER BOOTS.” GOOGLE SHOPPING INSIGHTS,
SHOPPING.THINKWITHGOOGLE.COM/ALL/OW8MQ/?UTM_MEDIUM=EMAIL-
D&UTM_SOURCE=PROMO&UTM_TEAM=TWG-US&UTM_CAMPAIGN=TWG-US-
SHOPPING-INSIGHTS-DOGFOOD-COMMS. ACCESSED 10 SEPT. 2017.
“UNITED STATES RAINFALL CLIMATOLOGY.” WIKIPEDIA, WIKIMEDIA
FOUNDATION, 7 AUG. 2017,
EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG/WIKI/UNITED_STATES_RAINFALL_CLIMATOLOGY.
ACCESSED 13 SEPT. 2017.
KARR, DOUGLAS. “WEBSITE BOUNCE RATES BY INDUSTRY AND
ADVICE.” MARTECH, 26 OCT. 2011, MARTECH.ZONE/INDUSTRY-BOUNCE-RATES/.
ACCESSED 13 SEPT. 2017.