With the launch of the new site and knowing how much our community loves data, I will be writing an analytics article presenting key statistical data related to the site's performance and traffic for each month.
The analytics shown below cover all of February 2011 and only pertain to the main site.
Where our readers and writers hail from:
One of the first things that jumped out at me was just how diverse our community is. As you can see on the map below, we've had at least 1 visit from a significant number of countries located all over the globe. Our least engaged continent? Africa.
It's also clear from the map above that while we are diverse, the majority of our main site traffic comes directly from the US. Here's the state by state breakdown of US traffic:
Wyoming is the only holdout, but we've got our pet hampster on the case. Apparently, when you enter Wyoming you're given a complimentary mug (or so the internet tells me). Maybe a mug giveaway could trick at least one Wyomian into visiting? Pennsylvania on the other hand has produced the most visits, a stat that is certainly tied to the fact that Kyle, Pat and I all live there. As we're three of the heaviest users (traffic, not weight, Google hasn't figured out how to measure the latter yet), this isn't surprising.
What browsers do you use?
Ever wonder what your fellow writers and readers are browsing the web with? Well wonder no more! (at least as far as WoKJ is concerned)
Firefox barely took first, with 10 visits more than shitty IE. If you're using IE of your own free will, please consider switching to a browser that supports W3C standards and timely updates! I've lost countless hours of my life coding hacks to make IE work, so the sooner I can code once and have a site work on any browser, the better. I'm personally a big Google Chrome fan, if you are too, try turning on Chrome Instant in the options, it's pretty cool.
The metrics above are much different than the overall web community, which uses IE over 50% of the time, Firefox around 24% and Chrome around 10%. I consider it a positive change.
How's Traffic looking?
The graph above represents the number of visits per day in February. As you can see, it's stayed fairly steady with an influx coming each Friday (though the very first spike is a Saturday). We had 5,358 total visits for the month, averaging just over 191 visits per day. Of those visits, 2186 of them are what Google considers a unique visit, meaning 2186 different people (or devices) visited the site. Those visitors consumed 10,622 different pages in Febuary, averaging about 2 pages per visit and staying on the site for an average of two and a half minutes.
I've noticed that pageviews are tied to the amount of content our writers put out. The more fresh content is out on a given day, the more pages people visit. We have some articles that the site generates, but for the most part, we rely on our users for content. So one of our challenges moving forward has to be engaging our community more. With traffic and pageviews in mind, why don't we take a look at the top 10 articles for the month:
- Evolution of Catwoman -- 444 views
- Oscars: Winners, Red Carpet, Commentary -- 172 views
- Scottie Predicts (February 11-13) -- 132 views
- I am Number 4 -- 120 views
- Rottentomatoes is Killing my Movie-Going Mojo -- 119 views
- Superbowl 2011 Trailer Aftermath -- 117 views
- Scottie Predicts (February 18 - 21) -- 104 views
- Scottie Predicts (Oscar Weekend) -- 104 views
- Actor I'd...Most Like to Have a Beer With -- 92 views
- Scottie Predicts (Superbowl Weekend) -- 85 views
The views above are from this month only using Google's numbers, and it's not 100% accurate as it's known to miss views from time to time. That said, it's a pretty good metric, and ties up fairly well with our server logs. Evolution of Catwoman took the top spot, mainly because it's done very well on Google for certain search terms. Scottie's weekly box office articles are also an obvious hit with the community. Pieces like the Rottentomatoes, Superbowl Trailer, and Actor I'd articles are pieces I adore, so I'm happy to see they do well.
I'd like to add a personal thanks to David, whose The Best (& Worst) Films of 2010 just missed out on the top 10. David writes a lot for the site, unsolicited, and we really appreciate it. I'm sure Jmart's best and worst would have done well too, but he keeps forgetting to write it, haha.
Well, that's it for this edition! If there's anything you'd like to see expanded upon or added to the article, leave me a note in the comments and I'll try to incorporate it next time. Thanks for reading!
