Webiste visit trends and patterns
Google’s results on popular internet use
The internet has boomed, social media, networking, emails.. even fundraising and dare I say it, mass marketing campaigns have gone digital. The internet has reached the majority of all households, ranging from the smart phone with emails, web browsers and app stores to the BBC iPlayer within the television recording box – the internet is the spine road of the digital highway.
With how much we use the internet for socialising through the likes of Twitter and Facebook, the amount of time spent online should be going up over the years, but a recent Google data mining exercise has shown quite the opposite is true.
The following information may come as a shock to many, and to others welcome news that could explain why the number of visitors in their analytics has been reducing over the past 6 months.
Reduction in visitor numbers
The overarching message of Googles newsletter is that the number of visitors to websites worldwide has reduced over the period 2009 – 2010 vs 2010 – 2011. This is both good and bad news at face value for most online retailers who depend on internet sales for the majority of their revenue.
In the first instance, the trends could be read to show that people are using the internet less and are tending towards other means of browsing, socialising and even shopping. This would certainly tie in with the current economic climate, where various high street retailers are now announcing profit decreases over the past year and recently Facebook had a slight scare warning that it was shedding users.
Panic Stations?
The biggest question is: Should I be panicking about having just spent £xxxxxx on my new online venture?
In short, I believe the answer to this is a clear “NO”.
A closer look
At first I was even a little startled at the evidence Google brought to the table regarding website visitor trending over the past year, but, being a scientist and mathematician by trade, I decided to look into the data that little extra bit closer to see what is really going on beneath the surface.
Looking at the data Google provided I quickly noticed that there were some significant changes over the past year.
The following table shows the visits trending for operating systems:
- Visits from non Microsoft operating systems were up across the board (particularly from symbian operating systems, or smart phones for the non tech savvy!)
- Visits from Microsoft based operating systems were down
- Visits from Japan displayed the largest drop in time on site
So from this data, I can see that although Microsoft based computers have served up less visitors over the past year, this has balanced out in the number of visitors served from Apple based computers and smart phones (the other category). So as people are turning to Mac, including the ipad and iphone, we are seeing Microsoft lose ground.
Also something to note is the increase in the other category – the smart phones and games consoles. This is something that can be extrapolated on, especially with the growing app market, where I can download an app and read blog feeds through an app, bypassing the need to browse onto a website to read my favourite articles. The Amazon Kindle has also played a part in this tactic with the news Kindle blog feeds, offering over 100 well read blogs on its smart pad, people have even less reason to browse onto a website to view information. So there is a possible legitimate reason for the reputed decrease in visitor trending and bounce rates going up across the board.
The other statistic to note is Japan has contributed largely to this, having a decrease in visitors time on sites, showing on average a drop by over 2 and a half minutes per visit! Meanwhile, the bounce rates of the same sample was down by almost 10%.
In closing
As a result of my further analysis, I have concluded that we should not fear the picture of change the statistics paint for us. Instead, we should learn and adapt our websites to cater for the change in our market. More people are using hand held devices, not just smart phones, but ipads. More people are using blog readers such as apps and the Amazon Kindle.
If we take note now of these changes, and amend our websites in accordance with these changes, then we should be able to keep up with the latest trends, and not miss out on valuable clients. It is time for change once again in the ever evolving animal that is the internet.
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