Web stats
I was looking at The Fresh Loaf traffic stats in the newest version of Google Analytics today and, I gotta say, I've never seen charts like these. For example, here is a visitor report for a typical website:
Weekend traffic is lower. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday have the highest traffic because most people are in the office those days and most web surfing, even if it is for pleasure, happens while people are at the office.
There is a similar curve throughout the day, with the highest traffic on most sites being between 10-2 PM Pacific Time, when people on both the east and west coasts of the US are in the office. Traffic from Europe and Asia can, obviously, impact how much off hours traffic you have, but I've never seen a US-based website whose traffic that didn't peak in the middle of the business day here.
Here is my chart for the past month.
The spike at the end is when StumbleUpon featured The Fresh Loaf. I think the dip on the 7th was when my server was acting up. Otherwise, it is almost a straight line. Traffic is higher around the holidays, but overall my traffic is extremely constant, with about 65% of traffic coming from new users and 35% from returning visitors.
What is really unusual is the visitor loyalty report:
When people return to The Fresh Loaf, they return. A lot. That almost 20 percent of my traffic has been to the site more than 9 times in the last month and that almost 5 percent has been here over 200 times is unheard of. I've never seen stats like that. This just reinforces my sense that you guys are crazy that we have a very enthusiastic community here. People come here and either decide this isn't what they were looking for and go away, or they decide this is exactly what they were looking for, so they come back again and again and again...
Comments
Floyd, thanks for sharing your statistics. Congratulations, you're doing it right!
Susan
TT
(and btw, you were wrong, that peak was when I started coming here! bwahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!) Silly me as usual!
Anyways, that's pretty awesome for a loyalty rating!!! You rock!
TFL is one of my home pages so when my computer is on and I launch into the WWW this site is up. I come and go throughout the day but basically I'm always "signed in." Not sure if that makes a difference in the stats. But no doubt we love spending time here - truly it is one of the nicest bunch of people I've come across online in a very long time. In no small part due to you, Floyd, cracking that whip! :o)
I imagine a lot of us are logged onto TFL on the weekends while we are waiting around for our dough to rise :-) That may account for your steady line all through the week. I know that is most often the case for me, I don't have a lot of time during the week to participate but am logged in a lot at home over the weekend while doing other things around the house. I am also one of those who never participates in any other online blogs except one private one just for my extended family, so the fact that I keep coming back here shows me you have something unique here and something that has reallly caught my interest. Your loyalty factor is great and not surprising! Thanks Floyd.
Floyd, this is the best most informative site on baking I have been to. I hae been to many too!
The people and the help and the bread porn photos! *drools* this site is an entire package. You come, you learn, your drool, your get fat on carbs, and eventually when your oven no longer births bricks, you can give back :)
Thank you Floyd for providing us all with "The Fresh Loaf" so that us baking nuts can have the suppost that we need.
thegreenbaker
Thank you for posting them.
I had not seen stats broken down that way before for any site.
Regards from southern mexico
(a.k.a. carpel tunnel central)