February traffic down from a year ago

Traffic at theorion.com started to climb in February, but it still ran well behind sessions and page views from a year ago.

Here are the overall numbers for February:
Pageviews: 53,336
Sessions (visits): 19,073
Pages per session: 2.8
Bounce rate (percentage of visitors who view one page and leave): 31.44 percent

QuillEngage, a service that summarizes web traffic, showed declines from a year ago on all platforms:

Month-over-month, your site's desktop sessions rose 47% to 9,094 sessions; however, there was a 24% drop in traffic (from 11,930 sessions) relative to the year before. Climbing to 9,028 sessions, mobile traffic was up 51% month-over-month. Relative to the year before, however, traffic decreased 47% from 17,090 sessions. Month-over-month, your site's tablet sessions rose 51% to 951 sessions; however, there was a 37% drop in traffic (from 1,499 sessions) relative to the year before.

The month-over-month numbers mean compared to January, when students are only on campus the  last 10 days or so, so traffic should have improved in February.

Finding the reasons for the decline in year-to-year traffic, of course, is more difficult than describing the symptoms. 

• QuillEngage pointed out that the bounce rate for the home page was higher than any other page on the website, meaning people who typed in theorion.com took a look and left. One of three things is going on: you're not covering what people want to view, people don't see anything new and leave, or your web design is not putting your best foot forward (maybe you need a new homepage design).
• It looks as if referrals from social media got better at the end of the month, but that's still running behind what was coming from Facebook and Twitter a year ago. This February, 3,558 of 19,073 visits (18.6 percent) started with a social media post. The same month last year, the numbers were 7,705 of 30,519 (25.25 percent).
• Content could be another reason. A year ago, the Oroville Dam story pushed traffic to more than 80,000 pageviews. We've known for a long time that news and breaking news are what readers want more than anything else, and this February didn't have a comparable big story. In fact, the top three pages for traffic last month were the homepage, the news section front and the opinion front, which probably means most people stopped to look for something interesting and didn't find it.

Here are the top 10 most-viewed stories for February:
1. Women's rugby rising to top of the nation - 570 pageviews
2. Resident Evil ushers in a new era of terror - 503
3. Getting Kray-ze for opioid alternatives - 455
4. Woman reports assault in her own home - 434
5. Nutrition professor dies suddenly - 423
6. Police blotter - 398
7. Third-party candidate answers Berners call for political action - 395
8. New physical science building to use fossil fuels, students criticize - 368
9. President Hutchinson responds to student concerns over fee increases - 312
10. New Wildcat statue funded exclusively from donations - 311