Submitted by Sammy Smith ([email protected])

How does thesga.org measure up?

Here are some basic statistics on the traffic the SGA’s website received from 2009 through 2011. The current version of the website “went live” in March of 2009, so we have only partial-year statistics for that year.

The top section shows raw totals for the year (with 2009 a partial year). The next section shows daily averages based on the annual figures. The lowest section shows monthly average breakdowns for the same annual figures. Of course the daily and monthly averages reflect the same patterns, but both are offered because one may make more sense to you than the other.

What’s notable here? One, the SGA’s website receives plenty of attention for the size of the organization. This attention is in part because the website offers real information about Georgia archaeology, not just information about the activities of the Society (e.g., meeting dates, President’s Messages). This means that many non-members visit our website and learn about archaeology in Georgia; this is good because one of the SGA’s missions is to educate people about our state’s archaeological heritage.

Two, while the website receives plenty of attention from new visitors, we also have a healthy 20% or so of our visitors who have viewed the website more than once in the annual reporting period.

Three, the number of page views per visit is only around 2, but that probably reflects that the one-time visitors have searched the web for a specific topic or combination of search-terms, which has turned up a webpage on our website that has those key terms. Thus, the new visitor doesn’t generally have an interest in materials other than the searched terms. This keeps the page views per visit low. Likewise, the time on site stays low at just under two minutes. That’s how long it takes the visitor who landed on our website while searching a particular topic to scan the webpage for the information he or she is interested in.

For kicks, here are some simple comparative statistics based on monthly averages for the three years under discussion.

And here are the same statistics presented as daily averages. Daily averages may be more useful because months have a different number of days.

Note that daily average pageviews of 260 (2011) and 293 (2010) indicate a strong interest in the SGA’s website. This means the Society would be wise to continue to publish topical stories that are informative to both our members and to non-members who are interested in archaeology, and in the archaeology of Georgia.

Do you have a story idea you think would be appropriate for this website and the vision and mission of the SGA? Please write the SGA's website editor and Editor of the SGA's quarterly newsletter, The Profile, with your idea.

Posted online on Friday, March 23rd, 2012