Website Statistics

[administrator]

I ran some statistics today in Google Analytics that I thought some of you may find interesting. I began using Analytics in early October 2007 and ran the statistics from then through today:

65,833 Visits

613,679 Pageviews

9.32 Pages/Visit

00:06:46 Avg. Time on Site

46.18% % New Visits

30,431 Absolute Unique Visitors

Pageviews I find only moderately interesting since Google and the other search engines spend a lot of time here and seem to index new information very fast. Percentage of new visits and absolute unique visitors I find very interesting however - this shows that almost half of the 65,833 visits since October 2007 have been from new users, so apparently we have lots of lurkers in the forums and a lot of people who are still finding us for the first time.

There are still significant improvements that I hope to make to the site (high resolution downloads, more intuitive navigation, etc.) but I think overall the new design has been a success.

Mark

[Carlspeak]

Mark, I almost always check the 'last click' option during my visits to CSP to see what people are reading and, in the process, consistently see the vast majority are guests vs members; on the order of 5:1 to 10:1 ratios.

I find that observation somewhat similar to public TV and radio - where the minority of viewers and listeners are actual contributing members whilst most are content to visit and not 'join the ranks' so to speak.

I guess most who visit CSP are simply looking for information to help them solve a problem. I post over at AK and try to reference CSP as much as possible in the hope some will be first time visitors and decide to join and contribute.

Would it be worth putting some boilerplate text on the discussion home page encouraging visitors to join? Would that benefit CSP?

[johnieo]

Mark, I almost always check the 'last click' option during my visits to CSP to see what people are reading and, in the process, consistently see the vast majority are guests vs members; on the order of 5:1 to 10:1 ratios.

Carl:

That's an interesting comment. When I view TCSP with cookies "off," the site considers me a guest and time is given in GMT. With cookies "on," a requirement to post, the site considers me a member and local time is displayed. Usually, I leave cookies "off" unless they are required. It may not be possible to determine how many of the apparent guests are TCSP members with cookies off.

Cheers,

[Carlspeak]

I would hope that once logged in, I would be able to see all members displayed as members and not as guests when I use "last click".

Mark, what is the member vs guest display criteria for 'last click'?