JULY 2011 WEBSITE TRAFFIC REPORT

The summer is flying by so quickly!! With this in mind comes the end of July 2011 and I wanted to share some information with our members and potential advertisers.

TyingTheKnott.com was publicly launched on July 10th, 2011 and the end of July marks exactly three weeks that this website has existed within the online wedding industry. With such a minimal amount of time you may wonder what impact the website could have possibly had, so let's find out...

As you can see in the chart above, the date (shown at bottom of chart flowing horizontally) begins on July 10th, 2011 (website launch date) and ends on July 31st, 2011. You can see that the website traffic climbed immediately after its launch, but aside from traffic spikes, you can also see some drops in traffic on other days, (exact daily stats listed below). We have taken the time to look into why this is to determine the trends of our website and the online wedding industry in general, here are the results...

WEBSITE TRAFFIC TRENDS

I invest several hours every day into TyingTheKnott, and while I could take an hour or two daily to post blogs and forums, I intentionally did not do this the past few weeks.

There are a few reasons why... such as trying to determine how many loyal members we have, to determine how many members know that they can post blogs and the benefits of posting, but more importantly I wanted to see the changes in website traffic within the time frame of new wedding blogs being posted here on TyingTheKnott and also the blogs impact and visibility within the search engine results of Google and other search engines.

TREND #1:  NEW WEDDING BLOGS

I have determined that there's a positive response with new visitors and returning visitors on the same day and 2nd day following a new blog post. This tells me a couple things... first, that if our traffic is spiking within 48 hours of every new blog posted, that many of our members return to check out the blogs and new website content.

Next, our analytics show that TyingTheKnott gets an average of 600 new visitors each day within the first 48 hours following a new wedding blog... that's an average of 1,200 new visitors each time we post a new wedding blog... and that's in addition to our normal average daily traffic - our current end of July average (based on a 3 week total) is just over 1600 daily visitors - this means each day that a new wedding blog is posted on TyingTheKnott that are reaching over 2,000 people daily and nearly 5,000 visitors in total within 48 hours following a new wedding blog.

With these proven results and traffic trend identified, I will now be investing much more time into adding daily wedding blogs and encouraging other members to participate in writing their own blogs here on TyingTheKnott.

HOW WRITING WEDDING BLOGS FOR US BENEFITS YOU  -  CLICK HERE 

TREND #2:  WEBSITE TRAFFIC PEAKS & VALLEYS

As I mentioned earlier, looking at the website traffic chart above for the TyingTheKnott website, you can see many traffic spikes (peaks) and traffic drops (valleys) just as you may be wondering the reason for this, so did we, and here's what we found...

In the first week following the launch of TyingTheKnott I didn't expect to make a very big impact so suddenly within the online wedding industry, but when I noticed that my website's traffic was doubling and tripling by the day, I knew that I was onto something good. This motivated me to continue on and improve upon the website's design and development. 

A week goes by, following the website's launch, and I noticed that my traffic dropped nearly 50%... and as anyone most likely would... I panicked!! I grew so concerned that maybe I wasn't onto something good after all, but before I knew it, a couple days pass and TyingTheKnott returned to its previous average daily visitors, and once again the amount of visitors and members began to double and triple just like the last week.

I felt much better. My confidence was restored, and it motivated another duct-taped eyelid website design binge!! TyingTheKnott was once again seeing peaks in daily website traffic... but before I could finish peeling the tape off my eyes to get some rest, once again the traffic declined to yet another valley.

Oh No!! What Now...?!

Rather than worry again, I was now curious to find out exactly what was causing these very obvious website traffic peaks and valleys, which uncovered trend #2 for TyingTheKnott and possibly the entire online wedding industry.

I realized that the days my website traffic spiked, the peak was always during the weekdays, and the website traffic would always reach a sudden decline with a valley always appearing on weekends, particularly Saturday's.

While there's an average to high amount of visitors still showing on Friday's, the traffic begins to decline Friday afternoon with a sudden drop on Saturday. Then on Sunday into Monday the traffic gradually increases back to normal, and then spikes again throughout the week, with the highest peak in traffic always appearing within the 48-hour time frame of new wedding blogs being posted, as mentioned in the first trend.

An "Aha" Moment...

The more I thought about it, the website traffic peaks and valleys made perfect sense... Almost every wedding takes place on the weekend.

Since TyingTheKnott is composed of wedding specific content, and all of our members and website traffic is from brides, grooms, wedding vendors and other wedding industry professionals, it would only make sense that a good majority of these people don't have time to be on the internet most weekends, because they are working their customers/clients weddings. The weekends are also the most common time a wedding vendor meets with prospective brides and grooms to book new weddings.

With this in mind comes the discovery of trend #2 for the TyingTheKnott website, and quite possibly an impact on the entire online wedding industry. I would be very interested to hear from other people who own a wedding related website...

ISOLATED TREND OR A WEDDING INDUSTRY TREND?

Do you own a website specifically related to weddings? Whether it's a site like TyingTheKnott or a wedding business website such as a wedding photographer, wedding planner, wedding entertainment, wedding officiants, etc...

If you have any wedding related website and have access to your website's statistics, either through Google Analytics or another method of evaluating your website's performance... do you see similar results with your traffic? Do you see this same trend that we have with a steady volume of traffic and peaks during the week, and a decline of traffic and valleys during the weekends? Please comment below to share your stats or opinion on this traffic trend for wedding websites.

STATS GRAPH EXPLAINED & DAILY TRAFFIC BREAKDOWN

You can see the website traffic statistics for TyingTheKnott in the graph above, but here's a quick explanation and breakdown. The chart reads with the dates across the bottom starting on July 10th ending on the 31st. The numbers on the left which go up the side of the chart shows you the number of visitors. For any particular date (on the bottom) all you have to do is follow the dotted line above the date to its landing point to see the amount of visitors / website traffic for that particular day. Our exact numbers are as follows:

Percentages and +/- figures are based on the difference in daily traffic. For example, if yesterday we had 1,000 visitors and today we have 1,500 there would be a green (up) arrow for today since it's higher than yesterday's traffic which is a 50% increase with an increase of +500 more visitors than there we had yesterday. However if today we have 1,500 visitors, but tomorrow we have 1,125 there would be a red (down) arrow for tomorrow since the traffic would be 25% less than we had today with a decrease of -375 less visitors than we had today.

JULY 2011 TYINGTHEKNOTT WEBSITE TRAFFIC STATS

SUN  7/10/2011 -- 431 Total Visitors   --  The Day Our Website Launched

MON 7/11/2011 -- 689 Total Visitors     -- ▲ 60%  Increase +258 Visitors

TUE  7/12/2011 -- 1037 Total Visitors  -- ▲ 51%  Increase +348 Visitors

WED 7/13/2011 -- 1320 Total Visitors  -- ▲ 27%  Increase +283 Visitors

THU  7/14/2011 -- 1652 Total Visitors   -- ▲ 25%  Increase +332 Visitors

FRI   7/15/2011 -- 1893 Total Visitors  -- ▲ 15%  Increase +241 Visitors

SAT  7/16/2011 -- 989 Total Visitors   --  ▼ 48%  Decrease -904 Visitors

SUN  7/17/2011 -- 1208 Total Visitors  -- ▲ 22%  Increase +219 Visitors

MON 7/18/2011 -- 1725 Total Visitors  -- ▲ 43%  Increase +517 Visitors

TUE  7/19/2011 -- 1908 Total Visitors  -- ▲ 11%  Increase +183 Visitors

WED 7/20/2011 -- 2014 Total Visitors  -- ▲   6%  Increase +106 Visitors

THU  7/21/2011 -- 1979 Total Visitors  -- ▼   2%  Decrease  -35 Visitors

FRI   7/22/2011 -- 1875 Total Visitors  -- ▼   5%  Decrease -104 Visitors

SAT  7/23/2011 -- 1202 Total Visitors  -- ▼ 56%  Decrease -673 Visitors

SUN  7/24/2011 -- 1398 Total Visitors  -- ▲ 17%  Increase +196 Visitors

MON 7/25/2011 -- 1729 Total Visitors  -- ▲ 24%  Increase +331 Visitors

TUE  7/26/2011 -- 1590 Total Visitors  -- ▼  9%   Decrease -139 Visitors

WED 7/27/2011 -- 1940 Total Visitors  -- ▲ 22%  Increase +350 Visitors

THU  7/28/2011 -- 2132 Total Visitors  -- ▲ 10%  Increase +192 Visitors

FRI   7/29/2011 -- 2004 Total Visitors  -- ▼   6%  Decrease -128 Visitors

SAT  7/30/2011 -- 1565 Total Visitors  -- ▼ 28%  Decrease -439 Visitors

SUN  7/31/2011 -- 1884 Total Visitors  -- ▲ 21%  Increase +319 Visitors

JULY 2011 AVERAGE DAILY VISITORS

7/10/2011 TO 7/17/2011  -  9,219 Total Visitors  -  1,317 Avg. Daily Visitors  (8 days)

7/18/2011 TO 7/24/2011  -  12,101 Total Visitors -  1,729 Avg. Daily Visitors

7/25/2011 TO 7/31/2011  -  12,844 Total Visitors -  1,835 Avg. Daily Visitors

JULY 2011 TOTAL WEBSITE TRAFFIC

Total Website Traffic / Visitors To TyingTheKnott In July 2011 - 34,164 Total Visitors

July 2011 Average Daily Visitors - 1,553 (based on 22 days from 7/10 to 7/31/2011)

Last 7 Days Traffic Increased To 1,835 Avg. Daily Visitors

Keep in mind that these numbers are not based on a full month since TyingTheKnott did not launch until July 10th, 2011 which is a total of 22 full days.

We will be writing another post (and will link it here once we do) with our current Google and search engine stats and trends, but for now... just know that there are already hundreds of pages for the TyingTheKnott website that are already indexed in Google and other search engines, from the blogs and forums right down to all of our members profile pages, photos and videos. More on this later, so check back for the link...