Web statistics for the launch of my directory
Once the site was ready enough to go online, I added Statcounter code and set it up to send me weekly summary reports by email. I’ve also written about each week’s triumphs and mishaps in more detail, to be serialized here in this blog (woohoo, exciting!) - just choose the
‘Launching a local directory’ category of posts to read all of them.
As a brief summary to anyone reading this post first, the website is a Joomla / Sobi2 based local directory for the county of Devon, which accepts family friendly free listings with a focus on arts and environmental groups, and offers paid-for extra features such as maps, galleries, ecards etc (some of which are free for artists and environmental groups).
This is the earliest stats report I received:
Weekly Stats Report: 9 Jul - 15 Jul 2007
Project: Stairway to Devon
URL: http://www.stairway-to-devon.co.uk
Mon Tues Wed Thur Fri Sat Sun Total Avg
Pageloads 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 3 0
Unique Visitors 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0
First Time Visitors 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0
Returning Visitors 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
The email report stats have just a fraction of the information that is available to you. To view your real-time stats reports simply login to your StatCounter account now!
Tumbleweed city! It must have been a Sunday when I set up the Statcounter project.
Here’s how it progressed:
Weekly Stats Report: 30 Jul - 5 Aug 2007
Project: Stairway to Devon
URL: http://www.stairway-to-devon.co.uk
Mon Tues Wed Thur Fri Sat Sun Total Avg
Pageloads 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0
Unique Visitors 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0
First Time Visitors 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0
Returning Visitors 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
(where was I…? Not sure why I’ve got so few pageloads as I must have been doing a lot of work on it) It was around this time that I added the first link to the site, as a news item on my company website, but this was just to allow crawlers in as I was still keeping things low profile until it was ready to launch properly.
Weekly Stats Report: 6 Aug - 12 Aug 2007
Project: Stairway to Devon
URL: http://www.stairway-to-devon.co.uk
Mon Tues Wed Thur Fri Sat Sun Total Avg
Pageloads 0 0 1 0 0 0 6 7 1
Unique Visitors 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 2 0
First Time Visitors 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 2 0
Returning Visitors 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Weekly Stats Report: 13 Aug - 19 Aug 2007
Project: Stairway to Devon
URL: http://www.stairway-to-devon.co.uk
Mon Tues Wed Thur Fri Sat Sun Total Avg
Pageloads 0 0 3 1 0 3 7 14 2
Unique Visitors 0 0 2 1 0 2 2 7 1
First Time Visitors 0 0 2 1 0 0 1 4 1
Returning Visitors 0 0 0 0 0 2 1 3 0
For the first time we see more than one unique visitor in a day, ie not just me - probably also my husband testing it from work!
Weekly Stats Report: 20 Aug - 26 Aug 2007
Project: Stairway to Devon
URL: http://www.stairway-to-devon.co.uk
Mon Tues Wed Thur Fri Sat Sun Total Avg
Pageloads 190 82 11 12 1 34 1 331 47
Unique Visitors 5 5 1 2 1 2 1 17 2
First Time Visitors 3 3 1 0 0 1 1 9 1
Returning Visitors 2 2 0 2 1 1 0 8 1
It was around this time that I added links from my customers’ websites (who were the first entries in the directory and receive a lot of free advertising in it).
Weekly Stats Report: 27 Aug - 2 Sep 2007
Project: Stairway to Devon
URL: http://www.stairway-to-devon.co.uk
Mon Tues Wed Thur Fri Sat Sun Total Avg
Pageloads 123 40 269 126 208 56 308 1,130 161
Unique Visitors 1 2 3 13 6 3 4 32 5
First Time Visitors 0 0 0 1 4 3 1 9 1
Returning Visitors 1 2 3 12 2 0 3 23 3
Busier week: I applied to several affiliate programs, and added the website to my online portfolio.
Weekly Stats Report: 3 Sep - 9 Sep 2007
Project: Stairway to Devon
URL: http://www.stairway-to-devon.co.uk
Mon Tues Wed Thur Fri Sat Sun Total Avg
Pageloads 132 34 69 13 217 248 245 958 137
Unique Visitors 5 5 4 2 12 3 36 67 10
First Time Visitors 3 3 0 1 10 1 33 51 7
Returning Visitors 2 2 4 1 2 2 3 16 2
Busier week again - I started adding it to online directories and search engines, asked some more of my family and friends to test it out (most didn’t though), and wrote about it in my blog.
Weekly Stats Report: 10 Sep - 16 Sep 2007
Project: Stairway to Devon
URL: http://www.stairway-to-devon.co.uk
Mon Tues Wed Thur Fri Sat Sun Total Avg
Pageloads 47 169 220 205 557 328 733 2,259 323
Unique Visitors 13 41 14 48 82 48 73 319 46
First Time Visitors 12 36 10 44 79 46 68 295 42
Returning Visitors 1 5 4 4 3 2 5 24 3
Extremely busy week - emergence of a rival prompted me to do a lot more intensive marketing / advertising than either the site or I were really ready for. This was the second time in a row that a rival site appeared out of nowhere just as I was finishing a project and having spent all my free time in the summer on this instead of with my kids, I wasn’t about to let this one go the way of the last one (shelved for the time being 
)
So, during this week, I posted to forums, gave out business cards, advertised with postcards in every free and paid location I could get to in my home town, linked the site from Facebook, LinkedIn, my family homepage and my email and forum signatures, persuaded my husband to post special offers on his bulletin board system at work, posted the site in a website review forum, phone friends and relatives and begged them to help, and most effectively of all, posted a free offer to my local Freecycle mailing list.
So I guess I would consider the week of 10-16 Sept 2007 the official, if inadvertent, launch of my website.
Weekly Stats Report: 17 Sep - 23 Sep 2007
Project: Stairway to Devon
URL: http://www.stairway-to-devon.co.uk
Mon Tues Wed Thur Fri Sat Sun Total Avg
Pageloads 134 217 158 144 191 135 128 1,107 158
Unique Visitors 62 29 38 21 36 27 19 232 33
First Time Visitors 60 27 34 17 28 23 17 206 29
Returning Visitors 2 2 4 4 8 4 2 26 4
During this week I continued adding my site to directories and posting to forums, as well as doing more postcard and business card advertising, and ordering some T shirts. I emailed a link building company that had been pestering repeatedly contacting me, but with no eventual success. Posted messages to two more local recycling groups, but with much less effect.
On the brighter side, somewhat amazingly, within this week, I applied and was listed in DMOZ, which promises well for the future, and I published another news item to publicise this small triumph. I also started emailing related sites in DMOZ asking them to exchange links with me, with one success.
The day after the DMOZ listing, I also got my first member siging up of their own accord.
However, much of my time this week was also taken up fixing many bugs and usability problems that appeared once real people started using the site (ie those who aren’t so used to it that they have developed blind spots about it’s user interface and functioning). Though ironically, one of my first users was actually blind, which just goes to show that accessibility really does matter, as well as being the law and all that.
Weekly Stats Report: 24 Sep - 30 Sep 2007
Project: Stairway to Devon
URL: http://www.stairway-to-devon.co.uk
Mon Tues Wed Thur Fri Sat Sun Total Avg
Pageloads 81 405 166 154 145 86 130 1,167 167
Unique Visitors 17 66 31 19 28 15 13 189 27
First Time Visitors 13 62 28 15 20 11 10 159 23
Returning Visitors 4 4 3 4 8 4 3 30 4
Plastered 2 more local towns with postcard and business card advertising, and did another tour round my home town, with a bit more confidence this time!
It’s unfortunate that my competition appears to have got the backing of the school and the town council, but I decided to focus on my wider geographical area and more specific subject niche. So I went to a regional craft fair and talked to the stallholders, getting new listings, news stories, events, etc, meeting some very nice people, handing out business cards and generally promoting the site. Again, much of my time this week was spent fixing the new bugs that arose with use of the site, and also adding some more news feeds and content.
Thanks to the forum postings, I have been getting lots of international traffic, so I created a new page to show this off.
With the sudden appearance of unexpected competition during my launch, the last three weeks in particular were extremely busy and stressful, however, the launch process overall has been exciting, fun, an interesting challenge and above all an intensely hardworking learning experience - no amount of reading newsgroups, textbooks or forum posts could substitute for actually going through this process by yourself.
The following graph shows progress made during the first 3 months, including the launch:
Unique and returning visitors over the same period:
