WINOL STATS

With the Third week of WINOL now safely under our belts, the amount of traffic has risen considerably. Both the Alexa Ranking and the GB Ranking has gone up again, giving an obvious indication that the amount of activity WINOL is experiencing has increased. I predict, and would be very disappointed, if the rankings do not continue to rise in the next few weeks as WINOL enters a period of stability and routine.

Now for the real stats, the percent of global Internet users who visit winol.co.uk has risen by 30%, and although the percentage is very low for overall internet traffic, for it to rise by such a percentage is no mean feat. In addition to this, the percentage of visits to winol.co.uk that consist of a single page view has also gone down. This can be interpreted in a number of ways: people are actively seeking out and are thus navigating the site, or that people have accidentally stumbled upon WINOL and are genuinely interested and intrigued by it's content.

The time spent on the site has risen dramatically by 165%. This is simply because we have added new content etc, but I am sure that promotion and competitions have had a huge effect on the traffic hits. On top of this, the bounce percentage has fallen again, and by 10%. The fact that the bounce rate has reduced, by no matter how much, is very positive and speaks volumes for us as a publication; people are logging on and not leaving the site on first glance.

The percentage of visits to winol.co.uk that come from a search engine has gone down again by 85%. This is very positive as people are going straight to our URL- meaning that people are taking note of the various mediums of promotion made available. Increased promotion brings people straight to the site, making the use of a search engine redundant. Despite the fact we have made our URL noticeable, the concept of search engine optimisation needs to be looked at, as even if people are looking for us, they may not find us. A negative factor in less search engine searches reaching us is that it doesn't bring WINOL higher on Google and others, which is a problem.

More notes of positivity can be taken from the Search Query Results. More direct searches for WINOL are bringing users to the site i.e. the most common search that brings people to the site is 'winol tv'. This is particularly interesting as it shows that people know we have a bulletin and that these people are not people who are overly familiar with us (meaning unique viewers), because our own students, and people who regularly use WINOL, know that we are not called "Winol TV". Furthermore, "Ba Journalism Winchester" has gone down in regards to the search enquiries which bring traffic to WINOL, which means people are searching for us as an independent news provider as opposed to a University-based publication.

As far as what content users are viewing when on WINOL- our top three most viewed articles are made up of our competition and two features. This would reaffirm the saying that 'people come for the news but stay for the features'. Clearly features are a vital tool in increasing traffic flow. It was obvious from the start of WINOL that the competition would bring the most traffic to the site, but it is now clear that features are bringing more traffic than news, so ensuring that they are of a high quality is imperative.