May 15 Statistics.
While deciding whether to leave the Card Master Top 50 Button & Link on my site I went through my site visitor statistics in some detail.
I have a variety of counting tools on my pages that count visitors to my site in various ways.
I described the Visitor Maps in some detail on a previous posting in this Blog so I won't repeat it here.
I use individual Site Meter counters like the one on the left side of this page to track visitors to specific areas in my sites. For instance there is a separate Site Meter for the Card Preview Page on Cards From Ogden Point. I can use that to tell me quickly how many visitors have gone to the preview stage of creating a Posty. That service uses cookies to track the visitors.
I have some counters from Extreme Tracking like the one on the Welcome Frame on Cards From Ogden Point. It uses a Java Script to record the visits without cookies. I use it to see if the visitor counts are different without cookies -- just to verify if I am losing visitors because of the cookies the other counters use. So far if I lose any visitors the count is not noticeable.
My primary counting device is AddFree Stats. It is a free service (as the others are) which allows different trackers for different pages within a site. I currently have 150 individual trackers on the various pages in Cards From Ogden Point. That may seem like a lot until you realize that there are 4109 individual pages in the main site and 101 in the backup site. The "trackers" count groups of pages because I have the same tracker on each page in various groups. For example, all the Mother's Day Index Pages share a tracker and all the Easter Index Pages share a tracker. So I can't tell which index page was viewed but I can tell if someone visited an Easter Index in a particular visit. The Slide Shows (Random Posty Pages) are all on index pages and they change pictures by refreshing the page. So if someone leaves the May 2005 Index Page open on their computer to watch the slide show, the 2006 pictures index tracker will increment its count every time the slide changes.
So what do I know about my visitors in 2006?
These stats are from the AddFree Stats Counters on Cards From Ogden Point for the first 135 days in 2006.
The Most commonly Viewed Pages:
The Valentine Indexes with 6589 views,
followed by the Main Index Page with 5565 views,
and the New/2006 Pictures Indexes with 4866 views.
The Most Common Entry page:
The Main Welcome Page with 1885 visitors entering there.
Next was the Card Pickup Page with 1443 people entering the site by picking up a card someone had sent them.
The Most common exit page:
The Card Pickup Page with 1187 visitors picking up a card and not staying on the site.
This is not something I want to happen LOL -- I'm trying to keep visitors. The number of people who stay at least long enough to send a Thank You Card has actually improved my visitor retention numbers -- before the "Thank You" links were added, even more people left immediately after picking up a card. The options of saving, printing, and emailing the card have added to the numbers of visitors who stay. With 1187 of 1443 people leaving, that is obviously a target audience I have to work on.
It would almost appear to me that there are three types of visitor -- those that come to browse the pictures, those that come to send a card, and those that receive cards. It would also appear that there is a distinct group of people who send cards, and that the people who they send cards to either don't reply or don't send cards (at least not from Cards From Ogden Point).
The visitors referred by search engines are growing.
The first 135 days of 2006 showed 576 Search Engine Referrals
(an average of 4.3 per day):
Yahoo: 268
Other: 172
Google: 119
MSN: 6
Excite: 3
Netscape: 2
AddFreeStats 2
AOL 2
Dogpile 1
Lycos 1
("Other" would include the MyPostCards Network Search.)
The whole year 2005 showed 599 Search Engine referrals (1.64 per day):
Yahoo: 333
Google: 207
MSN: 24
Other: 16
Netscape: 7
AOL: 7
Lycos: 2
Dogpile: 1
Webcrawler 1
Altavista: 1
231 of the 576 Search Engine Referrals in 2006 were in May. That tells me my efforts at Search Engine Optimization and the process of submitting Site Maps to Yahoo and Google is working.
There are 64 countries represented in the 2006 totals, and visitors used browsers with 9 languages other than English.
The majority of visitors in 2006 Use Windows XP:
Win XP: 4343 (79.59%)
Win 98: 488
Win 2000: 243
Unknown: 216
MacOS: 125
Win NT: 24
Linux: 10
Win ME: 7
Win 95: 1
The majority of visitors in 2006 use Internet Explorer:
MSIE: 4751 (87.06%)
Mozilla: (Firefox) 510
Netscape: 160
Unknown: 26
Opera: 9
KDE: 1
I build the site using Microsoft Office Front Page and check it for Browser compatibility in both Internet Explorer and Netscape while editing the pages.
I view the pages in other browsers on other Windows and Mac computers and correct any viewing discrepancies that occur in the various combinations. Strangely one of the most difficult browsers to satisfy is Internet Explorer on my Mac Computer. Things that show up and work in Safari, Netscape, or Firefox on the Mini Mac some times don't show up in Internet Explorer on the Mac despite being optimized for IE on Windows. Anything using Sun Java just hums on the Mac even if it drags on a Windows Machine, and Active-X does not run in any form on the Mac, even IE. The only pages that poses problems on Cards From Ogden Point is the Slide Shows with Music. My webcams on the PhotoServer have alternate pages for Java and Active-X so they can be viewed from either system.
The majority of visitors in 2006 use screen resolutions of 1024 X 768, followed by 800 X 600:
1024x768: 192 (48.00%)
800x600: 111
1280x1024: 25
1152x864: 9
640x480: 3
1600x1200: 1
1400x1050: 1
Unknown: 58
My Posty Pictures in Cards From Ogden Point are for the most part 640 X 480 pixels. That means that for the 3 viewers using the old VGA standard of a 640 X480 Browser Window, the cards and pictures will not quite fit in the browser window. I optimize the pages themselves for 800 X 600 viewing and check them in 640 X 480 so they will load and show properly in 99% of the viewers browsers and with minimal scrolling in the other 1%.
I have a variety of counting tools on my pages that count visitors to my site in various ways.
I described the Visitor Maps in some detail on a previous posting in this Blog so I won't repeat it here.
I use individual Site Meter counters like the one on the left side of this page to track visitors to specific areas in my sites. For instance there is a separate Site Meter for the Card Preview Page on Cards From Ogden Point. I can use that to tell me quickly how many visitors have gone to the preview stage of creating a Posty. That service uses cookies to track the visitors.
I have some counters from Extreme Tracking like the one on the Welcome Frame on Cards From Ogden Point. It uses a Java Script to record the visits without cookies. I use it to see if the visitor counts are different without cookies -- just to verify if I am losing visitors because of the cookies the other counters use. So far if I lose any visitors the count is not noticeable.
My primary counting device is AddFree Stats. It is a free service (as the others are) which allows different trackers for different pages within a site. I currently have 150 individual trackers on the various pages in Cards From Ogden Point. That may seem like a lot until you realize that there are 4109 individual pages in the main site and 101 in the backup site. The "trackers" count groups of pages because I have the same tracker on each page in various groups. For example, all the Mother's Day Index Pages share a tracker and all the Easter Index Pages share a tracker. So I can't tell which index page was viewed but I can tell if someone visited an Easter Index in a particular visit. The Slide Shows (Random Posty Pages) are all on index pages and they change pictures by refreshing the page. So if someone leaves the May 2005 Index Page open on their computer to watch the slide show, the 2006 pictures index tracker will increment its count every time the slide changes.
So what do I know about my visitors in 2006?
These stats are from the AddFree Stats Counters on Cards From Ogden Point for the first 135 days in 2006.
The Most commonly Viewed Pages:
The Valentine Indexes with 6589 views,
followed by the Main Index Page with 5565 views,
and the New/2006 Pictures Indexes with 4866 views.
The Most Common Entry page:
The Main Welcome Page with 1885 visitors entering there.
Next was the Card Pickup Page with 1443 people entering the site by picking up a card someone had sent them.
The Most common exit page:
The Card Pickup Page with 1187 visitors picking up a card and not staying on the site.
This is not something I want to happen LOL -- I'm trying to keep visitors. The number of people who stay at least long enough to send a Thank You Card has actually improved my visitor retention numbers -- before the "Thank You" links were added, even more people left immediately after picking up a card. The options of saving, printing, and emailing the card have added to the numbers of visitors who stay. With 1187 of 1443 people leaving, that is obviously a target audience I have to work on.
It would almost appear to me that there are three types of visitor -- those that come to browse the pictures, those that come to send a card, and those that receive cards. It would also appear that there is a distinct group of people who send cards, and that the people who they send cards to either don't reply or don't send cards (at least not from Cards From Ogden Point).
The visitors referred by search engines are growing.
The first 135 days of 2006 showed 576 Search Engine Referrals
(an average of 4.3 per day):
Yahoo: 268
Other: 172
Google: 119
MSN: 6
Excite: 3
Netscape: 2
AddFreeStats 2
AOL 2
Dogpile 1
Lycos 1
("Other" would include the MyPostCards Network Search.)
The whole year 2005 showed 599 Search Engine referrals (1.64 per day):
Yahoo: 333
Google: 207
MSN: 24
Other: 16
Netscape: 7
AOL: 7
Lycos: 2
Dogpile: 1
Webcrawler 1
Altavista: 1
231 of the 576 Search Engine Referrals in 2006 were in May. That tells me my efforts at Search Engine Optimization and the process of submitting Site Maps to Yahoo and Google is working.
There are 64 countries represented in the 2006 totals, and visitors used browsers with 9 languages other than English.
The majority of visitors in 2006 Use Windows XP:
Win XP: 4343 (79.59%)
Win 98: 488
Win 2000: 243
Unknown: 216
MacOS: 125
Win NT: 24
Linux: 10
Win ME: 7
Win 95: 1
The majority of visitors in 2006 use Internet Explorer:
MSIE: 4751 (87.06%)
Mozilla: (Firefox) 510
Netscape: 160
Unknown: 26
Opera: 9
KDE: 1
I build the site using Microsoft Office Front Page and check it for Browser compatibility in both Internet Explorer and Netscape while editing the pages.
I view the pages in other browsers on other Windows and Mac computers and correct any viewing discrepancies that occur in the various combinations. Strangely one of the most difficult browsers to satisfy is Internet Explorer on my Mac Computer. Things that show up and work in Safari, Netscape, or Firefox on the Mini Mac some times don't show up in Internet Explorer on the Mac despite being optimized for IE on Windows. Anything using Sun Java just hums on the Mac even if it drags on a Windows Machine, and Active-X does not run in any form on the Mac, even IE. The only pages that poses problems on Cards From Ogden Point is the Slide Shows with Music. My webcams on the PhotoServer have alternate pages for Java and Active-X so they can be viewed from either system.
The majority of visitors in 2006 use screen resolutions of 1024 X 768, followed by 800 X 600:
1024x768: 192 (48.00%)
800x600: 111
1280x1024: 25
1152x864: 9
640x480: 3
1600x1200: 1
1400x1050: 1
Unknown: 58
My Posty Pictures in Cards From Ogden Point are for the most part 640 X 480 pixels. That means that for the 3 viewers using the old VGA standard of a 640 X480 Browser Window, the cards and pictures will not quite fit in the browser window. I optimize the pages themselves for 800 X 600 viewing and check them in 640 X 480 so they will load and show properly in 99% of the viewers browsers and with minimal scrolling in the other 1%.
posted by ...ron... | 2:58 PM
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