My Summer Vacation
At Carden Guide we did not take an actual vacation this summer. We did however take pause to reflect on the work that had been completed last fall and winter, in the construction of our new website, and to begin planning site development to take place over the comming months.
One of the key areas of interest has been the subject of website traffic. How many visitors are comming to our site and what are they looking for? Have we achieved enough critical mass to be attractive to potential advertisers and how do we get our message out?
We have also begun initial planning for new content development, especially interactive content, and also for a program of user training that will allow more community organizations to create and maintain their own content.
Traffic Report:
The most commonly quoted website traffic statistic is the number of 'hits' the site receives in a given period of time. There are, however, several other statistics such as; the number pages viewed, the number of unique visitors, average number of visits per visitor, among others which may be more relevant.
To illustrate this point, here is some Carden Guide traffic data from June 2009.
| xxx |
Unique |
Number of |
Pages |
Hits |
| Viewed traffic * |
1677
xxxxx |
2213
1.32 visits/visitor |
13058
5.9 pages/visit |
143085
xxx |
| Not viewed traffic * |
xxx | xxxx |
8904 |
14618 |
* Viewed traffic is created by real people visiting the site
* Not viewed traffic is created by the search engine 'crawlers' or 'bots' - not real people.
* Unique visitors, Number of visits, and Pages are fairly self explanatory.
* Hits is the number of files displayed.
Are these good traffic numbers for a website of this type? The truth is that we really do not know the traffic volume potential. We do know that the volume of traffic is more than doubling each year, and that volume is directly related to the type and amount of content on the site.
Given, that the site focus is a small relatively sparsely populated geographic area we do not expect to draw huge traffic volume, nor do we want to. Our goal is to attract high quality closely targeted site traffic. Accordingly, the statistics of greatest interest, in addition to total viewed pages, are the number of visits per visitor and the number of pages per visit.
We are now quite confident that our volume and quality of traffic is high enough to be attractive to local businesses who wish to increase their market exposure. It is with this in mind that beginning in August we have started development our Business Directory Section. Check out our new advertisers, you are certain to learn something you did not know.
Promotions:
Win a Free Carden Guide Web Page!
We are inviting local business people to drop their business card into drop boxes at three central locations. Sebright General Store, Bolsover Naturipe Food Market, and Kirkfield Restaurant.
A winner will be drawn from each box on October 10th 2009, and three local businesses will win a free Web-page and advertising campaign. Details.
We have also placed signs at a number of intersections around the Carden Guide service area to help boost local awareness of our services. In the Fall we will also be offering year end special incentive pricing for new customers. Details will be available in mid October.
It is through the support of local advertisers that we are able to offer free web-space to local clubs and organizations.
Community:
We also plan further development of our Communities and Community Organizations pages over the comming months. With this in mind we are seeking community minded individuals who wish to contribute material.
Contact: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
We will be offering training that will allow Carden Guide users to create and maintain site content.
In addition to contributing articles of community interest there is also a variety of web-community features that could be developed for the benefit of the community.
- Events Calendar
- Forum
- Blog
Privacy Policy:
Carden Guide does not sell or exchange advertiser or user contact information.
