Perishable Press Site Statistics for 2007

One of the year-end maintenance rituals that I have decided to adopt involves sharing a few annual site statistics for Perishable Press. Over the course of the previous year, Perishable Press has gone through many changes, including switching servers multiple times, eliminating nofollow attributes from comments, and even a complete site overhaul and restructuring.

Despite the chaos surrounding such events, traffic levels have continued to increase, bounce rates have steadily decreased, and the number of feed subscribers continues to grow. Overall, I extremely pleased with how the site is doing, especially considering my disdain for formal advertising and social marketing nonsense.

Fortunately, with virtually zero promotional effort, Perishable Press has grown from a simple hobby site into an actual destination for web design and development information. Sure, in the endless ocean of the Internet, I am but a blip on the screen, however, looking at the statistics for 2007, I am optimistic and even excited about what the future may hold for this site.

2007 Stats

In order to save everyone time, I present the following statistics with minimal commentary. As my readers are well aware, I could spend hours and hours discussing every bleepin’ detail of every bleepin’ aspect of every bleepin’ statistic. See, you know what I’m sayin’. Instead, I will let the stats speak for themselves and then, if necessary, field any questions or concerns that you may have. Alright, enough bull droppinz — let’s get on with it..

Awstats Annual Statistics

Here, Awstats is showing a general upward trend in all categories. Data is unavailable for the first few months because the site was located on its previous server. Overall, this graph is very encouraging ;)

Mint Annual Statistics

Ahh, I love looking at stats with Mint. Here, we are looking at the site’s overall number of monthly hits versus total number of unique monthly visitors. Again, the trend seems to be working in my favor. Praise the Lord!

Visitor Locations

This makes sense. A majority of visitors to the site are from primarily English-speaking countries, namely, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. It is great to see such a variety of locations represented, even if there are only a few visitors from each.

Visitor Platforms

No surprises here.. A majority of users are still using Windows, however a significant number of peeps have embraced Mac and Linux. What tripped me out was seeing the Nintendo Wii represented in the list. We purchased a Wii for Christmas this year for the games; we have it connected to the Internet for Wii shopping stuff, but I hadn’t realized it could be used for general surfing. Bizarre.

Visitor Browsers

Looking at these stats, I can’t help but think about how significantly the browser market has changed over the past several years. Several years ago, this graph would have looked something like 85% Internet Explorer, 10% Firefox, and 5% other. I am very encouraged by this trend. In 2008, I will be paying extra attention to site design for these top three browsers.

Visitor Screen Resolutions

Higher seems to be the trend when it comes to screen resolution, according to these data anyway. I am not surprised, however, as more and more people continue to get involved and spend more time working online, larger, crisper, clearer monitors with higher resolutions seem like an obvious development. And I am no exception — this year for Christmas my wife upgraded my old flatscreen monitor to a HP w2207 widescreen model. Very keen :)

Feed Subscribers

Last but certainly not least is a look at the growing number of main-content feed subscribers for the site. Sure, the number is not large, but it is increasing every month, creating a nice upward trend in the ‘ol feed-subscription department. Also, keep in mind that I do not explicitly “ask” visitors to subscribe to my feed. These numbers reflect subscriptions for people who were determined enough to subscribe without any prompting whatsoever. I am very stoked about all of my readers :)

The wrap-up

So, what do you think? Not bad for a site that doesn’t advertise, self-promote, or push for links, right? Or am I like, totally delusional, without a clue as to how utterly pathetic and insignificant I really am?

Either way, I don’t care — I love doing this stuff and feel as if I am just getting started. If this whole post comes across as if I am just tooting my horn, I do apologize — that is truly not my intention. I am very grateful and appreciative to everyone who has helped me to get to this point — anyone who has ever linked to the site, shared a comment, sent an email, asked a question, mentioned a post, or subscribed to my feed — Thank you! I could not have done it without you! Especially to everyone who has graciously deemed Perishable Press worthy of a feed subscription and continues to read my content: Thank you — you are an incredible source of encouragement and inspiration. I value each and every one of you, and write these posts with you in mind :)

Okay okay, enough gooey stuff, no more messing around — it’s time to get back to the business at hand — creating quality content and sharing as much useful information as possible. Here’s to a great 2007 and an even better 2008!

Happy New Year!

About the Author

Jeff Starr = Creative thinker. Passionate about free and open Web.