One Year Anniversary

I cannot believe it was a year and a few days ago that I came up with the idea to write a blog about my views and interests in the field of technical communication. My first post, Post-STC 2011 Summit, started the journey in which I subsequently discussed QR Codes, Google+, Facebook, MySpace, Professional UsernamesTechWhirl, and many more topics.

To give you an idea of what has been going on behind the scenes, I will share with you some of the numbers from WordPress and Google Analytics since I began this blog and website. Enjoy the data!

The Raw Statistics

(Includes everything, including my own visits)

  • 1621 Visits
  • 956 Unique Visitors
  •  4671 Page Views
  • 58.42% Bounce Rate (single-page visits or visits that resulted in leaving the landing page)
  • 58.67% New Visits

Top Five States With Most Visitors

(excluding New Mexico)

  1. Texas
  2. California
  3. Illinois
  4. New York
  5. Massachusetts

Top Nine U.S. Cities With Most Visitors

(excluding Albuquerque, NM)

  1. Chicago, IL
  2. Austin, TX
  3. Minneapolis, MN
  4. Espanola, NM
  5. Santa Fe, NM
  6. New York, NY
  7. Los Angeles, CA
  8. Springfield, MO
  9. Dallas, TX

Top Five Countries With Longest Average Visit Duration

(excluding the United States)

  1. New Zealand (9:08 min)
  2. Antigua and Barbuda (2:00 min)
  3. Latvia (1:32 min)
  4. Singapore (1:25 min)
  5. India (1:08 min)

This is a small sampling of the data I collected. There is much more insight, such as types of internet browser, versions of operating system, type of internet service provider used to visit the site, etc.

Basically, when I looked at the data, I saw that I had the most readers from the United States and several from around the world. Visitors came in all forms, using Windows XP, Vista, or 7 or Mac OS X; Firefox, Chrome, or Internet Explorer; and iPhones, iPads, or Android tablets. Of visitors viewing the site, about 31% used a 1280 x 800 screen resolution, 11% used a 1680 x 1050 resolution, 9% used 1366 x 768 resolution, and the remaining used a mix of other screen resolutions.

These sorts of data can be very useful when deciding how to design websites for specific audiences and what kind of browsers and devices I should consider when building sites. I am a data geek, so it is really neat to look into the numbers and capture a glimpse of who my audience is.

I analyzed more of the data, and I have some goals that I want to accomplish in the next year:

  1. Increase Average Visit Duration
  2. Reduce Bounce Rate
  3. Increase Returning Visitors
  4. Increase Website Referrals
  5. Reduce Site Drop Offs
  6. Increase Post Comments

Think it can be done? Anything is possible. I will share more blog entries on my social networks in hopes colleagues will read them. Also, I will research more Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques so visitors can find my site easily using Google, Bing, or Yahoo.

I really look forward to comparing this year’s data to next year’s and see the differences.

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