Visitors Or Page Views?

If you're a blogger, there are two main statistics that mean the most. Visitor numbers and page views.

Visitor numbers are vital. The more visitors, the wider spread of people you're reaching out to. One level up from that are unique visitor numbers. The count of separate individuals - rather than numerous visits to your site made by the same people. 

Page views are also a vital statistic. It shows you how many pages your visitors are roaming through while on your site.

But which is more important? Depends on your own personal goals. Me personally, I think visitor numbers are more important. It gives you a clear indication of the scale of your website and how many people it is reaching out to. A website survives on visitor numbers, not necessarily page views.

For example, you could have 30 page views, made by only 3 visitors. Surely a better count of a website's traffic is the number of people coming to read it? I would take 30 visitors making 3 page views each instead.

Page views can also be a bit inefficient at times. Almost all blogs show a minimum of ten posts on the home page. So even if a visitor is reading 5 posts you've written, that is still only going to constitute as one page view, when really it should be recorded as 5.

Time for some stats. On the day this post was written, I had 119 visits to this site, from 102 different people - which I don't think is too bad. I also had 279 page views. Now if I had only told you about the page views, you may think that this isn't that many. But when you consider I'm averaging well over 130 visits per day at the moment from over 100 different people, I'd say that this the better measure of how well the site is doing.

I'd love to hear what all you fellow bloggers think about this, whether you agree or disagree. 

P.S. I'm forming a post about comments and how vital they are too!

Doors For £800 to £1000

My most recent poll: How Much Should An Average Door Be Sold For? has finished, and the clear winner, and what most people think is that the average door in this industry should be sold for between £800-£1000. The rest of the results are below:

These are how the results were split:


£400-£600: 12
£600-£800: 3
£800-£1000: 23
£1000+: 5


There were quite a few votes for the £400-£600 option. Personally I don't know how anybody can make a decent wage out of that sort of price. By the time you take out survey costs, material costs and fitting costs, how can a profit be made?


For me, the £800-£1000 group was the right choice. When you take out all of the costs, you should still be able to make a decent profit out of a single door. But I also think there is still a market out there to be able to see doors over £1000. There are some really high quality and premium doors available which when sold in the right way, can easily command a four-figure sum.


Price is one of the biggest issues facing the double glazing industry right now. There are debates going on as we speak about how companies should be raising their prices to make a decent profit margin, reflecting the high quality of many of the products being sold.

UK Market Report

Insight Data has released it's UK Market Report for the double glazing industry in 2010:


Fabricators:

• 2010 saw a decline in the number of fabricators: 4552 in total, across all materials.
• 34% changed their materials.
• PVCu fabricators declined to 1844 - aluminium fabricators increased in numbers
• The number of PVCu fabricators dual-sourcing their systems rose by 53%.
• 649 fabricators now manufacture more than one material: PVCu, aluminium or timber
• Those fabricating speciality products such as vertical sliders, composite doors, sash windows and bi-folding doors saw a fall of 20%.
• PVCu/aluminium conservatory roof fabricators saw a 20% drop to 449 companies.

 
Installers:

• Window and door installers saw a slight rise, to 12,549 companies, though volume per installer did see a fall.
• 55% of all installers diversified the range of home improvement products they sell.
• The East Midlands region has the most installers: 1595
• Northern Ireland has the least number of installers: 194
• 2010 saw a rise in phoenix businesses. The closure of some businesses and the cutting back of others saw a rise in new start-up businesses.
• 152 businesses closed due to retirements, with no succession plans in place.

Make you you will of these figures. I would have liked to have seen figures showing how many businesses had phoenixed during the last year.

Some Stats!

Despite this blog being started in March 2009, I didn't start receiving comments and views until the beginning of August. So, the stats below are based from August 2009 and onwards:


Visits per month/page views per month for 2009:
August: 201/510
September: 309/671
October: 430/883
November: 438/701
December: 372/626


Visits per month/page views per month for 2010:
January: 806/1226
February: 868/1382
March: 919/1690
April: 930/1736
May: 795/1325
June: 768/1171
July: 1077/1741
August: 1104/1899
September: 1504/2248
October: 1274/2077


I could do some more in depth stats but I think these are the main two that matter. My aim to to try to get to 2000 visits per month, then work my way from there.

Blog Visitor Numbers

The last post about my visitor numbers was shown in weeks, which probably wasn't so easy to look at, so I've got it in months now:

I must have written something very interesting over the Christmas period! It shot up at that point. The graph's figures are taken up to today, which explains the sharp dip at the end.

To date the stats are:

• 
  
  5623 visits
• 
  
  9975 page views
• 
  
  1.77 page views per visit
• 
  
  Bounce rate: 68.27%
• 
  
  Average time on site: 2min 26sec
• 
  
  New visits: 32.62%
• 
  
  1852 different visitors
• 
  
  Visits from USA: 108
• 
  
  Average time on site from USA visitors: 14sec
• 
  
  Visits from Philippines: 17
• 
  
  Average time on site from Philippine visitors: 3min 19sec

I thought I'd show the last four stats because of the strange differences between the American and Philippine visitors.

I know those stats can be improved on, and that will involve getting this blog a proper independent website. But last time I tried that it nearly all went wrong, so if I'm going to do it I'll get a proper website nerd to do it!

The reason why the graph starts at August is because that is when I started to get my first views coming through and my first comments.
PS: you'll have to click on the image to get it full size!

Visitor Numbers All Over The Place!

Looking back at my blog, it has become obvious that there aren't many pictures on here. So I got to thinking, what picture/graphic can I put on here which could be slightly relevant? So here we go:

This graph is timed from 1st August, roughly when I was first discovered by RCG, up to today. What is visible is that my visitor numbers have risen steadily as a trend. And also that more people visit this site at the beginning of the week rather than at the end.

Hopefully this trend will continue to rise. Maybe I'll even get to the dizzy heights RCG did!