Stats
October 13, 2009
I know, can you get any more boring with a title like "Stats"? Well, every now and then I like to check out the statistics for the Web site and compare to what was going on the year before. Below are some interesting numbers.
- 2008 Page Views to the entire site - 10,188,110
- 2009 Page Views to the entire site - 11,125,210
- 2008 Page Views for the Webcam page - 1,737,028 (top page with 17% of all views)
- 2009 Page Views for the Webcam page - 2,215,210 (top page with 19.9% of all views)
937,100 more Page Views to the Web site this fiscal year (Oct.1 - Sept. 30) than last year.
478,182 more Page Views to the Webcam Page page this year than last year.
In looking at the numbers, there is an increase in views each month, but the largest spike in numbers came in the month of September. For 2009, we had 915,373 Page Views compared to 663,926 the same month last year, for a difference of 251,447. I'm not exactly sure why September is so high. Did Ken Burns and his new documentary drive traffic back to us? Perhaps it was aggressiveness on our tweeting information? It brings me to our next set of numbers.
If you're not currently following us on Twitter, what are you waiting for? Twitter is allowing us to push accurate information to you in a timely fashion - information such as road closings and openings, weather events, what's blooming, trail status, special events, plowing updates next Spring, Webcam images, or anything else you might need to know about. Some ask, "why use Twitter, do people really need or care to know what is going on when they live so far away?"
Apparently so.
Since we started tweeting, clicks from Twitter and other sources back to our site have been coming from:
- 89% United States
- 5% Canada
- 1% Israel
- 1% Russia
- 4% Others (Trinidad & Tobago, Ireland, Jamaica, United Kingdom, Australia, and Hungary).
I should also mention that to date, we have 732 Followers (can we reach 1,000 before the end of the calendar year?).
So now that we have and know these numbers, what does it mean? For me, it tells me that people have a big interest in Glacier, especially this year. I'll go out on a limb and suggest that not only do these numbers reflect potential first time visitors to the park who are trip planning (our visitation is up this year roughly 13%), but those who desire to stay connected to Glacier no matter where they live. And I say this because if you look at the numbers, the Webcam page is the most popular page on our Web site (9th most popular in the entire NPS). The Photos & Multimedia pages also see significant traffic. I think because these pages are so visual in nature, they help people live vicariously. I know I sure felt that way before I started working here. I also think the need for quick and real-time information helps people in trip planning and living vicariously as well, which is why I think people are following us on Twitter and why our (which we haven't done anything with yet, but will) has over 6,000 fans to date.
This is all speculation on my part, but I'll throw the rhetorical question back and ask, "why do you think our numbers are going up?"
