Inside the Website - Turning the Corner [ edit | delete ]
By Adam Knoll | November 02, 2010 at 01:36 AM EDT | No Comments (1 new)
The Wilmot Phoenix Website has hit 1 year old this past month, and now we get the opportunity to compare ourselves to what we were in the past…website hits wise. We racked up a truly staggering 43,000 total hits in our first year (October 1st 2009 –October 1st 2010) as a web entity. 43,000 hits is truly a lot, and it speaks to the hard work and dedication of our players, and our fans. Yet, like I said, now comes a fun part; trying to see who we were last year, and if we are doing any better this year (so far).
In October 2009, after the website finally went public, there was a good amount of interest as we generated 2,265 total hits. In 2010, that number has increased to 2,304, a modest increase of 50 or so. Is that a major gain? Shouldn’t an established franchise be hoping for much more that a 50 page increase? Well, yes, and no…it depends on the situation. When the website went public last year, as I said, the interest was high and the website evolution was fast: New pages were going up almost daily. After running the Storm Website, I had a great starting point on what we should do, so I hit the ground running, and first time viewers (in which everyone was, really) went to almost every single page to see what was up. Everything was new…everything was interesting. Fast forward a year: Very little is truly ‘new’ as in great sections of content are up, and established.
When a person comes here, they know exactly where they are going, what they are looking for, and nothing else. So, let’s say in effect, a person last year would come here and look at everything, a person now comes and looks at a few. So that would mean, in effect, I would need more people to come here daily to get the same amount of hits…and by looking at the Home page hits, that’s exactly what has happened. We have had a full 250 more ‘home’ hits this past October than we had a year ago…we needed a full 250 more people to pull off the numbers, which means, in effect, we are more popular, and we are gaining steam.
Other numbers of note:
2009 2010 %
'Home' Hits are up 682 911 +33
'Blog' hits are up 231 356 +35
'Roster' Hits Down 241 107 -55
'GFL Teams' Down 87 40 -55
What do these numbers mean? Well, it essentially means that while people are still very interested in normal content, and check up on it a bit, the daily content that changes more constantly will stay more popular.
However, in just the past few months we have seen a massive downturn in the number of visitors that pretty much coincided with the end of the GFL season. In August we had 3,431 to just 2,304 in October. In Actuality, October was a better month for us as in September we only has 1,915 views. We can attribute this to the 6-man league as well as newer content going up. As always, the winter has its doldrums, and the GFL will head into a much dreaded deep sleep. However, November will be a telling month for us website as we did pretty well in the winter months I would say.
During the winter, we would like to keep the interest up, which means doing more sponsor work as well as fundraisers, team merchandise as well as Blogs and podcasts. Our reign as the only GFL franchise to do certain things is almost over as the South Milwaukee Rage just debuted a new Team Blog, as well as the Lynx getting into Podcast and Twitter action. However, we can always take solace in being the first GFL club to have entered the realm of Twitter, Blogging and Podcasts…it appears the waters will become more full of life. Will that be a good thing or bad thing? For the League, it will be a good thing. I always hoped that some of my ideas would rub off and make the league far more interesting. The more teams that do this the better our reach and the more fans have to cherish. For us? Maybe not so good. Being the only team to do certain things has its perks for sure…yet something tells me that even people who are on other teams, or are maybe fans of other teams will still come back. Hopefully, by being transparent we have gained supporters out there, regardless of team affiliation.
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