Hi All,
I have been mulling over some of the things that I have learned since Project Blogger and my arrival on Active Rain began. Since they happened within three days of each other, I am still very much in the "Oooh, Ahh, Wow look at that" stage of my blogging life. And, while it may seem like I have been here forever, I have only been on the scene since March 31 really. So, forgive me if I gush about things that I have discovered or ideas I have come up with. Just chalk it up to enthusiasm and lingering newbieness. Now, on to the business at hand...
One of the tools that I have been using to great effect since right after the Project Blogger contest started is Google Analytics. For anyone who is not familiar with it, Google Analytics, when attached to your personal blog or website will give you accurate, real world statistics on what your site is doing and how it is doing it. This program tracks overall visitors to your site, unique visitors and returning visitors. It also lets you know an overall average of how many pages are being viewed by each visitor, how much time each visitor is pending, again on average, perusing your site and where they are coming from (browser and referring site or direct), entering from (what article brought them in) and exiting from (what article are they leaving from).
It will also show you your "Long Tail" statistics. For anyone who, like me, before I attended Dustin's lecture in March had heard the term "Long Tail" but had no idea what it meant or why it is important, I will try to explain it as I understand it. The long tail shows you in a graphic representation how well you are doing getting unique, (meaning visit one time and never come back), and returning visitors to your site. The overall goal is to build a site that effectively does both. Brings in the new reader but then engages them so that they will return again and again and again.
Why am I telling you about this stuff? Because, I am going to offer to disclose my stats, show my my digets, toss out my numbers for all to see with regard to my site Route66Living.com and am asking/issuing a challenge to the other apprentices to do the same.
I am learning that by watching these numbers, I can start to fine tune my offerings to my audience. By watching the numbers rise or fall depending upon what is on my site, I can, hopefully continue to offer information that interests, engages and entertains my readers enough so that they will come back to visit again and again and again. I can also see, by watching bounce rates (who came in and immediately left) if I perhaps tickled a no-no spot and got folks to visit my site who were thinking that it would be something else entirely.
Now, I am by no means an expert on Google Analytics or on how to use the information. And I am quite sure that I am not using all of its features to my best advantage. But, the parts that I "get" are proving interesting and valuable to me. Also, in light of the PB event, I think it would be really interesting to see real numbers on how many people we are getting to read what we are writing. And isn't that the point? Oh, and you can also see what percentage of your readers are coming via Active Rain and what percentage are coming from other sources like Google searches, etc.
So, without (much) further ado, here are some screen shots of my most current stats from when I first applied Google Analytics April 15, several days into the competition to now May 19.
This is the top half of the first pageof the dashboad on Google Analytics showing my overall number of visits to date 891 and my overall number of page views 2292. It also shows that the average visitor on Route66Living.com is looking at 2.57 pages per visit and remaining on the site 3:34 Minutes.
This is the second half of the page showing the referral sources by percentage and also the total number (519) of unique one-time visitors, thus far. The balance 372 visitors are returning to my site multiple times.
The referral sources break down as follows: 573 visits or 64.31% are Referring Sites, 296 or 33.22% are coming directly to the site without using a referral source, 21 visits or 2.36% are coming via Search Engine and 1 visit or 0.11% are getting there by other sources.
Of the referring sources Active Rain is responsible for 262 visits or 29.41% of my traffic the balance is coming from other means.
Here you see the number of page views total, average page views per visitor and average time spent per visitor on the site. What this tells me is that when people are visiting my site, they are actually reading my posts and not just popping in.
If I were to suddenly start seeing a really high number of visits and the page views and time spent on the site radically declining, I would have to assume that something that I did or wrote was being found, but not by people who were looking for my site. Since I can look at these statistics on a daily basis, I might be able to figure out what I did to correspond with the dip in visits or an increase in traffic.
And here it is... Last but certainly not least, the beginnings of a long tail. I am very pleased to see that my returning visitors rate is rising steadily. 88 people have visited 2 times, 43 have come back 3 times, 25 = 4 times, 13 = 5 times, 12 = 6 times, 9 = 7 times.
Now here are the really cool numbers, 38 have returned 9 -14 times, 39 = 15 - 25 times, 40 = 26 - 50 times, 50 = 51 - 100 times and 6 = 101 - 200 times.
Looking at just the number of readers that have returned to view Route66Living.com 9 or more times, I can deduce that I have about 173 regular readers.
Pretty cool I think. And I deeply appreciate every single one!
Attaching and accessing the Analytics info to your site is really simple, just register for Google and then follow the directions on the home page that links above. I did it all by myself and now that they have changed the appearance of the site somewhat, it is easier for me to read and understand.
Now, it's your turn. Show me your stuff!
Take care all, help lots of people and have a nice day!
Tisza
;)
;)
