Monday, December 18, 2017

After a strong start, web traffic fizzles

Fall Semester 2017 Web Traffic from Google Analytics.
Traffic on theorion.com slowed way down in the last half of this semester but still managed to outpace Fall 2016 by 24,000 page views. Last spring semester, though, was three times as busy (678,035 pageviews) as either one.

The numbers did contain one bit of good news, though. The bounce rate (the percentage of visitors who stayed to read just one page) was the best it's been in three semesters: 25 percent. Fall 2016 was 66 percent; Spring 2017 was 36 percent.

Fall 2917 mobile app analytics from GoodBarber.
Traffic on The Orion mobile app was also down from spring -- 15,691 views versus 23,787 last fall --  but downloads crossed the 2,000 threshold as 142 people put it on their phones.

 In all, it was a pretty dismal showing after a strong start.

I think my diagnosis of the problem from earlier in the semester is still valid: A poor social media effort kept the number of visits and views low. That's something that HAS to be addressed next semester.

Silver lining: The Orion home page continues of get strong and consistent traffic: 31,324 visits this semester and 32,266 during Fall 2016. That means visitors are using theorion.com much as they use a regular newspaper to browse what's new and important on campus. That same behavior shows up for section fronts, too. Here are the pages with the most traffic on the site from Aug. 21 to Dec. 15.

No comments:

Post a Comment