Visitor Culture
For me (and for most people) Google Analytics is mainly just a tool to see how many hits we are getting, where they are coming from, etc. It is a shame because if anyone takes a couple extra minutes to really look at what its telling us, we can actually learn something about our visitors.
Here’s a chart showing where Piksel’s visitors are coming from.
It’s no surprise that they majority of users are coming from the social news network Digg. Being ‘dugg’ can send a site tens of thousands of visitors within a matter of hours, but to no surprise, the page hits won’t last for long, and after 2-3 days the typical digg users will be long gone. From the thousands of digg visitors, you would be lucky to even have 1% return to your site. If someone were to ask whether I preferred 10,000 digg visitors or 1,000 StumbleUpon visitors, I would have to go with the StumbleUpon. And here’s why:
Above is a chart showing the time the users spent on the site, and how many of them stayed on the site and viewed more pages. Although digg users come in large volumes, they clearly spend the least amount of time on the site. While in complete contrast, StumbleUpon users spend noticeably more time on the site, and are more likely to browse more than one page of your site.
Don’t get me wrong, the being ‘dugg’ is great (as long as your server stays up). It gives you exposure, it gets you out there, and everyone knows that with such a large amount of traffic there are bound to be visitors which will come back. But in the end it is a question of quality vs quantity. Do you want your visitors to take their time to read it, or do you want to get as many advertisement clicks as possible?
I will be posting more about visitor culture, and interesting ways on how to use Google Analytics soon.
-joel
5 Comments, Comment or Ping
88bytes
I have to agree with you. the loyalty of stumbleupon users is much more reliable. I found myself being popular in DIY sites, such as lifehacker and diy:happy, where in digg i only scored 15 duggs.
though its cool to have the digg button on your post
Jun 27th, 2007
TimTotango
I always was under the impression that StumbleUpon users were less usefull than Diggers, because with stumble Upon people are just looking for some entertainment, and will stumble on to the next page very fast if your design is not positively stunning etc.
Digg users come to your page because they want to read your site, not because they get there by accident.
But I gues it depends on the type of website you are running. Websites about photogrphy or design might be better of with Stumble.
Jun 27th, 2007
Jerry
@Tim: I think your average Digg user has about 20 links waiting for him back at digg.com. He’ll check your article and then go right back to reading the next article. At least that’s how I do it. StumbleUpon users have more time, I’d guess. They “stumble” for the sake of discovering something new, and so they’ll invest that extra time if they’re into your site. Or so I think, but I keep hearing more and more positive things about StumbleUpon in terms of increasing traffic and loyal return visitors.
Jun 28th, 2007
MICHAEL J. SCHMITZ
I’M CURIOUS ABOUT LIFE, OBJECTS ETC. BUT I HAVE FOUND THE SITE STUMBLEUPON, IT HELPS MY CURIOSITY, ALSO ALLOWS ME TO EXPLORE AND DOWNLOAD TO JOIN OTHERS AND TO BRING TO ANY AND ALL DIFFERENT KNOWLEDGES OF MANY COUNTRIES AND IDEAS FOR YOU AND VISA-VERSA. I HAVE TIED IN WITH SOME AND DUE TO CERTAIN WEB SITES HAVE LOST SOME OF YOU AND AM SEARCHING TO REGAIN WHAT I LOST AND FIND WHAT OTHERS HAVE FOUND AND ARE STILL LOOKING FOR.
Jul 30th, 2007
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