Behind the scenes: site statistics

Hi folks, so I hope that from time to time I can show you some behind the scenes stuff that companies don't think about showing the public, or even things that are considered "confidential and proprietary." My plan is to be as transparent as possible for fun, educational purposes, and so you can get a sense of what starting your own venture feels like. (hint: right now it feels scary/fun/easy/impossible) This is no big deal but here is a brief look at my web stats since I launched the blog.

Blogger's web stats or good but if you install Google Analytics...even better

In many ways the number of visits and pageviews is comically low. I would like to say this image is "tad" dated and I'm up to about 5,700 page views as of today. See, I have a complex about showing you my page views...but I'll press on. I keep telling myself that 5,000 is a lot more than zero :)

What I find particularly fascinating is being able to observe the impact of my external actions, in real time, through the web statistics. Okay, you online marketing and ad people are thinking that's blatantly obvious, and it is. The crazy thing is that the little blue line represents ME interacting with YOU dear readers. I don't know that I can explain it, but the whole thing is suddenly personal and not just some marketing abstraction.

Yep, you are part of that little blue squiggle

So this data is current as of today. Four minutes to read six pages! You guys read really fast. I also didn't get Google Analytics installed until Feb 5th but I launched the site on Jan 24th. The "new visits" statistic is also interesting. That means 40% of visitors are returning. Here is the crazy part...of those returning visitors...40 individual people have visited the site between 50-100 times...each!

I don't know who you are but you are superstars. That means I should sell at least 40 lights right? *wink, wink* Oh, I know you are thinking I'm counting my own page views but I'm not :) Oh I also wanted to mention, those little blue squiggles are called "spark lines" and (as far as I know) were invented by Edward Tufte. I think they are cool and actually represent the real data.

Okay the last thing is, I want to make this a little competitive. Here are the most popular referring sites:

These figures represent absolute unique visitors from each of these sites. I guess it's about what I would expect, but you should all know that Candle Power Forums is REALLY beating the rest of you like a drum. Tell your friends and see if you can't knock CPF out of the top spot :)

Visitors rock! Keep coming back. This isn't fun for me if people aren't engaged. I'd rather be in the shop than at the computer. So, let me know what kind of content you want more of; what you would be interested/excited to read about!