Analyzing the Reasons Behind XEN's Explosive Popularity from Data and Marketing Perspectives

Original Title: "Data Analysis: The Traffic Secrets Behind the Surge of the XEN Crypto Project"

Author: Gu Liang, NFT Metaverse Marketing Circle

Introduction

XEN Crypto is probably the most discussed project recently. While the whole internet is buzzing about "the minting of XEN causing Ethereum gas fees to skyrocket," as marketers, we are more concerned with how XEN became popular. With a sudden idea, we will explore the XEN project from the perspective of traffic and data to see if we can provide some insights for Web 3 marketers who are also exploring this space, decoding the traffic paths behind the project's explosive growth. Therefore, this article will delve into the XEN project website to further present the project:

• Overview and trends of traffic

• Audience demographics and geographical distribution characteristics

• Traffic structure and source breakdown

• Possible factors that could trigger project explosions

Traffic Overview

XEN Crypto Information Site

As of October 14, 2022, https://www.xencrypto.io/ has generated 178,000 visits. From the perspective of traffic trends, the first peak before the official sale of the project appeared around September 27, followed by a second peak around October 5, and the first peak after the official release on October 8, with a second peak on the 12th (influenced by rumors of an attack).

From the perspective of traffic sources, before the official sale, mobile traffic was predominant. After the project was launched, the proportion of PC traffic continued to rise, with mobile and PC traffic distributed roughly in a 2:1 ratio.

XEN Crypto's Issuance Site

As of October 14, 2022, https://xen.network/ has generated 984,000 visits. From the traffic trend perspective, since the announcement on Twitter on October 2, it has been gaining momentum during the pre-heating phase, sharply increasing on the official release date of October 8, reaching a traffic peak on October 9, and maintaining a high level for 1-2 days following the fermentation of public opinion.

By comparing the traffic trends with https://www.xencrypto.io/, it can be observed that the peak positions of the two sites are temporally correlated. The main information site carried most of the traffic during the pre-heating and user acquisition phases and redirected traffic to the Mint site through internal links.

From the perspective of traffic sources, unlike https://www.xencrypto.io/, mobile traffic accounts for 27%, while PC traffic accounts for 72%, reflecting that most token contract operations still prefer PC usage. Meanwhile, the increasing mobile social media dissemination has led to a monopoly of mobile traffic on the main information site.

Geographical Distribution of Audience

Given that SimilarWeb can only capture the user access addresses of PC traffic, to better showcase the geographical distribution of the audience, we further analyze the PC-dominant traffic of the https://xen.network/ site to examine the user demographics. Three points are worth noting:

• Poland is the country with the highest traffic in Europe, which seems inconsistent with our traditional perceptions and highlights the potential of Web 3 in emerging countries.

• Southeast Asian countries, including Indonesia and Vietnam, are also showing significant momentum. Singapore may not have made the top 10 due to its small population base.

• The overall average visit duration on the site exceeds 8 minutes, indicating high engagement, but on the other hand, it also reflects the learning cost of pages in this field.

From this demographic data, my immediate impression is that the borderless nature of Web 3 and the vigorous potential of emerging markets, including the rise of countries like Poland, Indonesia, and Vietnam, suggest that in the foreseeable Web 3 competition over the next 5 to 10 years, traditional Western countries may not necessarily lead. Emerging markets might bring more surprises, and these regional markets could offer more possibilities for the subsequent expansion of Web 3 businesses.

Traffic Structure

The popularity of the project is undoubtedly driven by traffic. Next, we will further examine the traffic sources of https://www.xencrypto.io/ (the reason for starting with this site is that it carried most of the traffic before and after the pre-heating and official release, and analyzing its traffic sources can help us understand how the traffic surged).

From the chart, we find that the overall site traffic is composed of:

• 34.48% from Direct, meaning users accessed the site by directly entering the URL or clicking from bookmarks;

• 6.85% from Referral, meaning traffic came from other websites that referred users;

• 23.13% from Social, meaning traffic came from social media sites;

• 35.54% from Organic search, meaning traffic came from users searching relevant keywords on search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc., and clicking on the search results to enter the site;

Next, we will break down each type of traffic source.

Referral Traffic

The following chart further pulls the referral traffic of https://www.xencrypto.io/ over time, revealing that referring traffic has been continuously rising since October 9. As of now, the site has accumulated over 300 external links, many of which are from crypto news sites.

The next chart identifies the sites that played a role in driving traffic to the XEN Crypto project during its early release. We find that many of these sites have a domain authority above 70, undoubtedly playing an important role in amplifying the project's visibility. Additionally, the news published on these sites is also shared on their social media, further stimulating dissemination on social platforms. It is preliminarily determined that this is the primary traffic booster that led to the explosive popularity of the XEN Crypto project after its release.

Social Traffic

According to SimilarWeb data, 58.59% of the PC traffic to https://www.xencrypto.io/ comes from Twitter, and 39% comes from YouTube. While the importance of Twitter in Web 3 dissemination is undeniable, we will focus on YouTube here. Based on the keyword "XEN Crypto" captured on social media before the project release (before October 8), we can preliminarily conclude that YouTube's role in the pre-heating phase was the second traffic booster that contributed to the rapid popularity of the XEN Crypto project upon its launch.

Although Twitter dominates social traffic, it appears that YouTube is the platform for generating original content during the project's pre-heating phase, which is then disseminated on Twitter, driving further engagement. The following chart captures the keyword tracking records for "XEN Crypto" on the BuzzSumo platform, revealing that before the October 8 release, the project team had made intensive content arrangements on YouTube, which can be understood as training potential audiences. The content layout includes several noteworthy and replicable points:

• Founder Jack Kevin interacted with multiple YouTube accounts focused on crypto in live streams. Although these accounts may not have a large following, their audience is highly targeted, as evidenced by video views and interactions.

• Unlike regular YouTube influencers who typically do one-off promotions, several accounts treated the XEN Crypto project as a series topic, releasing a series of videos from October 1 to October 7, covering various aspects such as principles, gameplay, founder LIVE sessions, and performance, ensuring both depth and breadth of content, and achieving repeated exposure to potential users.

Organic Search Traffic

Regarding organic search traffic, the traffic trend shows a peak in searches before and after the release, which can be preliminarily attributed to the pre-heating dissemination triggering search behavior.

When we further analyze the keywords that formed user search behavior and the top accessed pages on the site, we observe some interesting phenomena. Excluding the homepage and well-known pages about gas consumption and the official response to the attack, the highest traffic pages focus on explaining the game theory of XEN Crypto and related how-to pages, as well as how to connect with MetaMask.

My most immediate impression is that even in a crypto-related release, we should not underestimate the learning costs of potential audiences. It is necessary to lower all learning and cognitive thresholds sufficiently, clearly explaining the how-to and why from the most basic aspects, which could attract more attention. The audience's inclination to access content on the site also proves this point.

How to Conduct Founder Marketing

Regarding the marketing analysis of XEN's explosive growth, the article "Behind the Surge of XEN: Is it 'Premeditated' Operations or a Coincidental Event?" has already covered it comprehensively. Here, I would like to emphasize the role of founder Jack Levin in the project's advancement. In the operation of Web 2 startup brands, founder marketing is a common strategy, creating brand value recognition by shaping the founder's story and persona.

The XEN project indeed provides a great example of applying founder marketing in Web 3. We have seen too many projects in Web 3 initiated under the names of big influencers but with extremely limited participation, ultimately becoming a harvesting ground for the project team (a typical case can be referenced in early NFT marketing examples: Can Everything Be NFT? Why Did Celebrity Projects with Hundreds of Millions of Followers Fail?).

In XEN Crypto, at least Jack Levin is a consistent presence throughout the project, acting as the spokesperson. More importantly, he provided the founder with a clear and communicable label #Google21, even laying out two dedicated articles in the project's initial Twitter and Blog to tell the founder's story and his relationship with Google. Typically, the opening tweet of the official Twitter account in Web 3 reflects the market entry strategy of the project. XEN's approach to entering the market from the perspective of the founder's story indirectly confirms the project's considerations in content marketing.

How to Use Rumor and Mystery for Dissemination

Rumor and mystery are always the fastest and widest forms of dissemination. Their destructive power lies in the information points contained in the content that can stir people's hearts and form self-propagating power. During the social monitoring of the XEN project, it was found that on October 7, just before the project release, a post circulated on Reddit.

From the perspective of a single platform like Reddit, the dissemination of this post is not large, but when searched on Google, you will find that there are as many as 132,000 entries containing both "XEN" and "Satoshi Nakamoto." From the early blog content of the XEN project, it is also evident that the project team is striving to create associations between XEN and Satoshi Nakamoto. Perhaps it is not the source of the rumor, but it is certainly a contributor to its amplification.

Takeaways for Web 3 Marketers

After reviewing the XEN Crypto project, there are marketing insights worth emulating. Here are a few key points:

• The PR list during the dissemination process of the XEN Crypto project has reference value;

• Select YouTube influencers to organize a series of thematic reports on the project, driving social dissemination;

• Fully lay out and anticipate content to lower the entry barriers for potential audiences;

• Create topics by embedding content tags with "viral" attributes and emotional triggers in the project, such as "Google Employee #21" and "XEN's Revival of Satoshi Nakamoto," to stimulate discussion;

• Integrate founder marketing into the project's vision and storytelling to enhance project endorsement and trustworthiness.