Retrotalk : Important Announcements : State of Retroland.com For October 2009

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mwsmedia Member Since: September 2009 Contributions: 214 Gold Stars: 4 View User Posts	State of Retroland.com For October 2009 Posted: Tue Nov 03, 2009 6:53 pm Central Time Hey everyone, We'll do one of these posts every month or so to keep you abreast of the site's progress and growth as well as fill you in on future plans as much as possible. This is a long one... thanks in advance for giving it a read! As folks know from posts here and there in Retrotalk, Boss Radio and Jupiter have been pouring a lot of energy and resources into Retroland.com over the last month or so. While we're not there yet, making Retroland.com a self-sustaining site is a continuing priority for The Powers That Be. Ironically, perhaps, for a site whose mission is focused on a celebration of the influence of the past, Jupiter and Boss Radio have been working day in and day out to bring Retroland.com into the 21st century when it comes to the interactivity and community features of the site. New Faces As is well known by now, I was brought in as "Chief Evangelist" at the beginning of October. My primary responsibility is to increase awareness of Retroland.com and build traffic to and interest in the site. We're well aware that refinements to the community guidelines, as well as renewed, closer moderation efforts, have been a source of friction for some and cause for celebration for others. I'm available to anyone who wants to discuss the these things via e-mail ( suggestions@retroland.com ) and private message, and I'm grateful to the folks who have taken up that invitation. Please remember, though -- the public forums are not the place for that. Two other folks have begun working on the Retroland team on the "back end." We have a Content Manager working part-time with me, creating Retropedia articles, drumming up ideas for new ones, and polishing up existing content. If you have ideas for Retroland articles, or even for new whole categories of articles, please let us know at suggestions@retroland.com. We also have a Web Developer working closely with Jupiter, taking concepts and theory and sketches and turning them into a new web site that, hyperbole aside, is going to be a new worldwide source for awesome. We'll talk more about both the Content Manager and the Web Developer in the near future. Site Progress and Growth Now, let's look at how the site did in October compared to September, and to October of the previous year. When we compare October 2009 to September of 2009, keep in mind that there were two "outliers" in September -- two days when traffic spiked to about 200% of the norm for the month. That's going to throw things off a little. By the way, the two sites that sent us all that traffic and new visitors in September? Dlisted and GoFugYourself... both by linking to our Fashion Plates page! How did they find us? We have the number two search result for that term in Google... and the number one result simply isn't as good as our Retropedia article. Search led those sites to us; quality led them to link to us. This is why search is so important to Retroland.com, and why what people see when they come here is so critical to our success. Visits to the site were up 6.65% from September, and up 25% from October of 2008. Unique Visitors to the site -- individual people -- were up 4.88% from September, and up 30% from October of 2008. Pageviews - the number of individual pages on the site viewed by a visitor - went up 17.56% from September, and dipped 18.95% from October of last year. So we gained ground there in the short term, but still have a ways to go compared to last year. Time On Site went up 22.98% in October compared to September, and dipped 36% compared to the previous October. A great boost from September, but another area to examine what was going on in October of 2008! Bounce Rate is the percentage of visits to the site that result in only one pageview -- in other words, someone comes to the site and clicks away without digging in. Bounce rate went down 3.14% from September, which means more folks hung out longer in October, but bounce rate went up 10% from October of 2008. This could be attributed to visits being so much higher -- more new people are "dipping their toes in the water." Ideally, they return! How did people get to the site? 64% came via search engines (up 4.56% from September and down 9.35% from October 2008) looking up keywords like 90s fashion, dolphin shorts, 8 ball jacket, jello pudding pops and, yes, fashion plate. The huge majority of people come to our site via search. The least amount of traffic -- about 10% -- comes from people coming directly to Retroland.com, deliberately. We want to flip those numbers -- we want most people to come to Retroland.com as a destination, much as people go to Facebook or Twitter now. Right now and no doubt for a long time in the future, most people will come to Retroland as a result of something they searched for at Google, Yahoo! or Bing. This is why first impressions are hugely important. This is why we've placed such an emphasis on staying on topic, abiding by the community guidelines, and putting new topics in the right forums in Retrotalk. It makes a tangible, real-world difference. Why Does This Matter? It might not be obvious to folks how new and repeat traffic, and the length of time people stick around once they're here, impacts the success of Retroland.com. Basically, in the short term, it comes down to clicks on those automatically generated banner ads at the top of every page. We get an almost literal pittance whenever someone clicks those ads, so its comes down to math and human nature: the more people who come to the site, the more those ads get seen. The more often they're seen (by one person visiting multiple pages and / or spending lots of time on the site in one sitting) the more likely they'll get clicked. Cumulatively, that makes a difference: it helps pay for all the hardware and upkeep and overheard that keeps the site running. In the long term, if Retroland.com can show consistent increases in traffic, direct sponsors will be more willing to support the site through personalized sponsorship arrangements and even, eventually, investment. That's down the road a ways. Looking Ahead In November, expect to see a video-taped (can you say "taped" when it's all digital?) conversation with Jupiter and Boss Radio all about the origins of Retroland.com and the shared passion that inspired them to create this site. Also, look for more Retropedia articles being added -- and when they are, please contribute your memories for the subjects if you have any! Then, as now, we're featuring a Memory of the Day every weekday on our Facebook page. If you're not a friend of us on Facebook, please become one! We'll continue to work toward the release of what we are obliged by convention to call Retroland 2.0 -- and we're hoping to involve all of you in a very special, real-time on-line conversation to tell you all about it. We're going to shoot for November for this; stay tuned. Finally, if you have a Twitter account, please follow @retroland, and send us a tweet when you hear about anything interesting and retro-centric we should spread to the rest of the world. Most every day, we tweet about retro birthdays, interesting factoids, and talk with other folks who are as into retro culture as all of us. Thanks for reading! _________________ Matthew Wayne Selznick Chief Evangelist http://www.retroland.com
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