2017
WEBSITE USAGE REPORT FOR THE YEAR 2017
Period: January - December 2017
Website: www.franknelte.net
1) TOTAL VISITORS TO THE WEBSITE
There were 28,034 visitors, at an average of 77 per day.
The total number of visitors per Quarter was:
1st Quarter 2nd Quarter 3rd Quarter 4th Quarter Whole Year
4,745 5,675 7,216 10,398 28,034
The average daily number of visitors for each Quarter was:
1st Quarter 2nd Quarter 3rd Quarter 4th Quarter Whole Year
52 62 78 113 77
There was a steady increase in the number of visitors every Quarter. The number of visitors in the 4th Quarter alone was only 22 short of the total for the first two Quarters combined.
2) BREAKDOWN INTO NEW VISITORS & RETURNING VISITS
Of these 28,034 visitors, there were:
New Visitors: 19,036 = 67.9%
Returning Visits: 8,998 = 32.1%
The ratio of new visitors to returning visits is fairly close to 2:1. There were around 9,000 repeat visits from people who had visited this website previously.
3) TOTAL NUMBER OF PAGEVIEWS
The total number of times articles were looked at was 50,423, at an average of 138 articles per day.
The total number of articles viewed per Quarter was:
1st Quarter 2nd Quarter 3rd Quarter 4th Quarter Whole Year
10,184 11,383 12,397 16,459 50,423
The average daily number of articles viewed was:
1st Quarter 2nd Quarter 3rd Quarter 4th Quarter Whole Year
113 125 134 179 138
There was a steady increase in every Quarter for the total number of articles viewed per day.
4) TOTAL NUMBER OF WEBSITE USERS
For the year there were 19,118 different visitors.
(Here Google Analytics has a slightly larger number, less than half of one percent larger, than the number it has provided for "New Visitors" above. This discrepancy is of no consequence to me.)
1st Quarter 2nd Quarter 3rd Quarter 4th Quarter Whole Year
3,021 3,761 5,093 7,654 19,118
(The yearly total here is slightly less than the sum total for the four Quarters, but these are the figures that Google Analytics provides in the reports. Once again, minor differences in these numbers are not important to me.)
5) TOTAL NUMBER OF COUNTRIES REPRESENTED
For the whole year the visitors came from 169 different countries.
These numbers include visitors from the following number of countries:
In North America = 3 countries (i.e. incl. Bermuda)
In Australasia = 2 countries
In Europe = 40 countries
In Asia = 41 countries
In Africa = 35 countries
In South America = 12 countries
In the Caribbean = 20 countries
In Central America = 8 countries
In Melanesia = 4 countries
Micronesia Region = 2 countries
In Polynesia = 2 countries
(Comment: Google Analytics counts Bermuda as a part of North America, rather than as a part of the Caribbean. And Mexico is counted as a part of Central America. In my website reports I have retained Google’s way of grouping all countries, since my reports are based on the data provided by Google Analytics.)
(Comment: For a list of all 169 countries see the separate report titled "City Numbers By Country". Depending on how people count, there are from 40-64 other countries or territories in the world, from which no visitors came to my website during 2017. The great majority of those countries / territories are small and remote. Together all those areas account for almost 370 million people out of the 7,550 million people on Earth during 2017, or just under 5% of the world’s population . So the countries from which visitors came to the website during 2017 represent 95% of the world’s population. We’ll see how many of those remaining 40-64 "countries" will have website visitors during the year 2018.)
No advertising of any kind on my part, or initiated by me, was involved in bringing visitors to the site. I have also not attempted to use any SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques, to perhaps attract more people to my website. I am not opposed to people using SEO techniques, but I see no need for me to use such techniques (i.e. employing specific algorithms and the frequent repetition of key words, etc. in an attempt to have Google list one’s website near the top of searches that are performed by users of the internet) in an attempt to drive more traffic to my site. If people really need to find my website, then they will find it.
With the above statistics for 169 different countries, I believe that anyone anywhere in the world who is seeking to understand God’s truth more fully, and who has access to the Internet, can find this website. The 169 countries and almost 5000 different cities around the world, represented by website visitors for the year 2017, make me think of: "go you into all the world, teaching all nations ...".
6) NUMBER OF CITIES WORLDWIDE
For the whole year visitors came from 4,990 different cities and towns scattered across those 169 countries. This number also illustrates the geographically wide scattering amongst the visitors to the website.
7) NUMBER OF CITIES IN THE U.S.A.
Visitors came from 3,432 cities and towns in the United States. These cities were scattered throughout all 50 States and D.C.
For some other major English-speaking countries visitors came from:
- 289 cities in the United Kingdom
- 195 cities in Canada
- 52 cities in South Africa
- 34 cities in Australia
- 21 cities in New Zealand
Looking at all these numbers for cities from which visitors came to this website during the course of the year 2017, it does make me wonder about Jesus Christ’s statement in the second half of Matthew 10:23. Just how many cities does God’s Church have to reach before Jesus Christ will return? Just a thought ...
(For a detailed breakdown by country for all 4990 cities see the separate report "THE NUMBER OF CITIES FOR EACH COUNTRY FOR VISITORS".)
Some visitors might like to read on the website articles that are shorter than 10 pages in length. There are over 120 articles of this length. For articles longer than 10 pages most visitors would probably print or download those articles, rather than read them on the website. There are over 200 articles with 10 or more pages each.
For visitors to the website who do not wish to read the articles online there is the choice: they can either download the articles to their own computers, or they can print out the articles directly from the webpage.
Below are the statistics for these two groups.
8) NUMBER OF ARTICLES DOWNLOADED
For the year visitors downloaded 380 articles.
9) NUMBER OF ARTICLES PRINTED OUT DIRECTLY
For the year visitors printed out 7,545 articles.
10) COMBINED TOTAL OF DOWNLOADS + PRINTED
For the year the combined total was 7,925 articles.
11) RATIO OF TOTAL VISITS TO (PRINTED + DOWNLOADS)
The 7,925 articles either printed out or downloaded, compared to the 28,034 total visitors represent 28.27%. Put another way, for the whole year 1 article was either printed out or downloaded for every 3.53 visitors.
This indicates that a high number of visitors find information they are looking for, and which information they then either print out or else download. I believe that 28.27% is a very positive response rate. And in addition, a minority of visitors read whole articles during their website visits, as indicated by those visitors staying on the site for considerable periods of time.
12) TOTAL NUMBER OF DIFFERENT ARTICLES VIEWED
By the end of 2017 there were 333 different articles with a total of 6,540 pages of text for visitors to read and to print/download. Those 333 articles have the following number of pages each (as originally recorded in my Word Perfect format, which may well be somewhat different from your copies of those articles):
- 122 articles = from 1-9 pages long
- 83 articles = from 10-19 pages long
- 66 articles = from 20-29 pages long
- 41 articles = from 30-49 pages long
- 17 articles = from 50-99 pages long
- 4 articles = 100 pages and up
Of the total 333 articles, during the course of 2017 visitors viewed 332 articles at least two or more times.
The only article on the entire website that was never looked at during the year 2017 was a short 1996 article in the Calendar Articles Section regarding "Some Background to the Roman Calendar". It seems that subject is no longer relevant in a Church of God context, and I will consider removing that article from my website.
Apart from that one article, 100% of articles on the website were looked at anywhere from a minimum of 2 times to a maximum of 2,323 times. For the 10 most viewed articles see #15 below.
13) MAIN BROWSERS USED BY VISITORS
#1 = CHROME used by 46.4% of visitors
#2 = SAFARI used by 25.3% of visitors
#3 = FIREFOX used by 8.1% of visitors
#4 = INTERNET EXPLORER used by 7.7% of visitors
#5 = OPERA MINI + OPERA used by 3.4% of visitors
#6 = EDGE used by 2.8% of visitors
#7 = MISC. OTHER BROWSERS used by 6.3% of visitors
7 out of every 8 visitors used either Chrome or Safari or Firefox or Internet Explorer to come to this website. The "miscellaneous other browsers" reflect the diversity of browsers available to people in far-flung areas of the world.
14) ACQUISITION, HOW VISITORS CAME TO THE WEBSITE
Organic Search = 18,989 = 67.7%
Direct Visits = 7,716 = 27.5%
Social Media = 788 = 2.8%
Referrals = 541 = 2.0%
(For an explanation of these 4 terms see the "OVERVIEW FOR THE REPORTS ON THIS WEBSITE" page.)
The 26,705 visitors, who came either as "Direct Visits" or as a result of "Organic Search", represent over 95% of all visitors to the site. They represent 19 out of every 20 visitors. The over one quarter of all visitors who type in the website address directly represent people who visit the site fairly regularly. And two-thirds of all visitors are searching for some specific information when they come to this website, as indicated by the "Organic Search" data.
15) TOP 10 MOST VIEWED ARTICLES
Of the 50,423 Pageviews during this period, the following were the top 10 most viewed articles.
#1 = The Real Story Behind the Translation of 2 Timothy 3:16
Viewed = 2,323 times
#2 = The Timing of the Barley Harvest in Israel
Viewed = 2,184 times
#3 = The Name Lucifer Has Never belonged To Satan
Viewed = 1,840 times
#4 = Isaiah 14:12 (in Mistranslated Scriptures)
Viewed = 1,792 times
#5 = Significance of the Feeding of the 5000 & the 4000
Viewed = 1,127 times
#6 = What does the Bible say about Eating Fat?
Viewed = 1,101 times
#7 = What Does "The Foundation of the World" Really Mean?
Viewed = 632 times
#8 = The Meaning of "Clean & Unclean" and "Holy & Unholy"
Viewed = 419 times
#9 = 80 Mistranslations of the Bible & Their Significance
Viewed = 417 times
#10 = "Submitting Yourselves to One Another"
Viewed = 385 times
These top 10 articles were viewed 12,220 times, and this represents close to a quarter (i.e. 24.2%) of the 50,423 pages that were viewed during this year. See also the separate report "Most Viewed Articles".
16) 7-DAY PERIOD WITH HIGHEST NUMBER OF VISITORS
While my desire is to provide biblical understanding to all people who are searching for such understanding, my target audience are people who have some background in the churches of God. I write my articles with a Church of God perspective, meaning that mostly I don’t explain certain things that are commonly understood by people in the various churches of God.
Visitor numbers to my website were higher during and immediately after the Feast of Unleavened Bread in April, and again during and immediately after the Feast of Tabernacles in October. This increased interest level around the two 7-day Feast periods indicates that a large proportion of all visitors to my website have some Church of God association, people who are searching for more understanding during those Feast periods. This assessment is further reinforced by the fact that for most weeks during the year the highest daily visitor numbers are almost always on Saturdays. I conclude therefore that for the year 2017 my website was being accessed overwhelmingly by my target audience.
The 7-day period (not a literal week) with the highest number of visitors for the year 2017 was during the Feast of Tabernacles, for October 9-15 inclusive. During those 7 days there were:
- 1,213 website visitors (4.3% of the year’s total)
- who viewed 1,699 articles (3.3% of the year’s total)
- these 1,213 visits came from 991 different users
- 222 visits came from repeat visitors during those 7 days
- visitors came from 600 cities and towns
- located in 52 different countries
Let’s also consider another statistic, one which websites generally prefer not to divulge, because it is a bit of a negative statistic. In fact, many websites prefer to not even be aware of this statistic. However, it is helpful to be aware of this statistic if we seek to establish a realistic picture for website visitors, rather than an unrealistic and artificially inflated picture.
17) NUMBER OF VISITORS WHO CAME BY MISTAKE
Every website has visitors who didn’t really want to visit that website. They clicked on something without really knowing where that click would lead them. Or they had a totally different expectation when they clicked that link. Or they were inquisitive, but had no real interest in the website on which they landed. In some cases we were tricked, deceived or enticed into going to a website. You know the feeling.
At one time or another we’ve all clicked on something, only to find ourselves at a page where somebody wanted to sell us something, or get information about us and from us, or lecture us on something, when we had no intention of getting involved. So when we get to such a website, as soon as we realize our mistake, we exist that page by clicking the "Back to Previous Page" arrow in our browser bar, or we may even abruptly close the browser itself. We can’t leave fast enough.
In those cases we are counted as having visited those sites, when in fact we wanted nothing to do with those websites. So our "visit" artificially inflates the visitor numbers for that site, something most websites actually desire (i.e. they desire inflated visitor numbers). But for us personally our "visit" to that site was meaningless. For us it was a mistake.
This happens to all websites, that visitors come "by mistake". And that is also true for my website, that some people, who were not looking for anything that is available on my website, ended up coming as visitors. And typically such "visitors by mistake" exit as quickly as possible.
Now it is a bit tricky to quantify such "mistaken visits". So here is how I have arrived at the number of visits in this category.
For every visit there is a "Landing Page", and there is also an "Exit Page". The "Landing Page" is where a website visitor arrives at a website, and the "Exit Page" is where the visitor leaves that website.
On my website there are well over 300 different "Landing Pages", where visitors can and do arrive at my website. All of those "Landing Pages" provide the visitor with meaningful information (i.e. articles, reference material, etc.), except for one page.
The one page on my site that does not provide information itself is my Home Page. All that the Home Page offers is access to specific information (like articles, research information, a calendar tutorial, etc.). The Home Page is simply the gateway to all the information available on my site. To get any information from my website, visitors must click to another page, away from the Home Page. And the great majority of the visitors who land on my Home Page, do click through to other pages on the site. But some visitors don’t.
So when visitors have my Home Page as their Landing Page, and if they then also have my Home Page as their Exit Page, without having clicked to any other page, then I believe that such people were "visitors by mistake". They didn’t look for any information on my website, other than the text on the Home Page, and they left after seeing nothing more than the Home Page. They did not access any meaningful information. So here is this statistic:
Total visits for the year = 28,034.
Visits where the Home Page was both Landing Page + Exit Page = 1,408.
1,408 = 5.0% of the total number of visits.
So we can say:
5% of all visitors in 2017 were "visitors by mistake". They came and then left without looking for any information. They were not looking for anything on my website. Thus such people have inflated my visitor numbers by 5%. I suspect that this percentage is likely to basically hold true for future years. But time will tell.
The upside of this picture is that the other 95% of all visitors are very likely "real visitors" who are looking for information and understanding, as evidenced by the large number of articles that were printed out and downloaded. And 95% still amounts to a significant number of visitors.
18) SEARCHES PERFORMED ON THE INTERNET
In November 2017 I started a Monthly Report based on Google Search Module data. For every month this Report will record in how many searches around the world my website appeared in the search results. Those appearances in search results are designated as "Impressions". It will also record how many of those "Impressions" led to people actually visiting the website. Those visits are designated as "Clicks". And it will also record "the Average Position" in the search results that applies to all of the "Impressions" for every country. The smaller the number for "Average Position", the greater the likelihood that those people will actually see the reference to my website.
All three of these statistics are grouped by country. I will only keep such Monthly Reports for 3 months. After that they will be deleted from the webpage and replaced by new reports.
For a more detailed discussion of these Monthly Reports, see the page titled "REPORTS OVERVIEW".
So here are some statistics for December 2017:
1) During December my website appeared in 81,314 internet searches around the world. If this trend holds up for the coming year, it will mean that my website will appear in about one million search results for a full year. Only a small portion of those "Impressions" will lead to actual website visits.
2) 41,411 of those searches in December were performed in the USA.
3) The remaining 39,903 internet searches were performed in 212 other "countries" (as Google counts countries). Visitors to the website did not actually come from all of those 212 other countries, as is made clear earlier in this report.
4) The 81,314 times this website was listed in internet search results led to 2,657 visitors coming to the website, 1,508 of whom were in the USA.
5) The total number of all visitors to my website for December 2017 was 3,408. Thus the 2,657 visitors who came as a result of having done a search on the internet represent 78% of total visitors for that month, with the remaining 22% of visitors coming directly by typing in my website address, or they came as referrals from other websites, or they came from social media.
6) For December 2017: for every 30 internet searches anywhere on earth that featured my website address somewhere in the results pages, there was 1 visitor to the website.
IN SUMMARY The following conclusions for the year 2017 emerge from these reports:
1) The 28,034 visitors came from 169 different countries, representing 4,990 different cities or towns around the world. This includes visitors from every continent and from some of the most remote human settlements and some of the most remote islands on earth, representing a vast range of local languages. On average, there is 1 new town represented for every 5.6 visitors. This shows a very wide geographic spread amongst visitors to my website.
2) While close to 60% of all visitors live in the U.S.A. (i.e. 16,672), those visitors were spread around in 3,432 different towns and cities in the U.S.A., spread across all 50 states. On average, there is 1 new town in the U.S.A. represented for every 4.8 visitors from the U.S.A. This shows that people from every part of this country are accessing this website.
3) 332 out of the 333 articles on the website at the end of the year were viewed at least twice during the year by visitors to the website.
4) The 28,034 visitors to the website either printed out or downloaded 7,925 articles. That represents 1 article printed out or downloaded for every 3.5 visitors.
5) Close to 72% of all visitors used either Chrome or Safari as their browser of choice to come to the website.
6) During this year 68% of all visitors were new visitors, and 32% were return visits by previous visitors. The ratio of return visits to new visitors is 1:2.1.
You might also like to see the separate reports "SUMMARY FOR MOST VIEWED ARTICLES IN 2017", which report combines the quarterly data for the "most viewed articles", and then expands the list for the whole year to the 10 most viewed articles, and "THE NUMBER OF CITIES FOR EACH COUNTRY FOR VISITORS", which report shows the number of cities for each of the 169 countries from which visitors came to this website.
The above statistics are restricted to website activities, and they do not take into account all the articles I send out via my personal email mailing list, which list also includes people from many different countries around the world. And during the year 2017 I sent out 20 new articles.
This is a small 1-man website, and I do not seek a following. And I certainly don’t seek any financial contributions. If website visitors are able to find information they find helpful, then my goal has been achieved. I was happy to learn that over 28% of all the visits to my website for the year 2017 resulted in 1 article either being printed out or downloaded by those visitors.
I suspect that the in percentage terms significant increase in the number of visitors for every quarter is perhaps due to all the internet search engines having catalogued my website more completely since we installed Google Analytics. But if those trends hold for the coming year, then the year of 2018 is heading for something like a 100% increase in the number of visitors over the year 2017. Personally I am a believer in the principle that "it is God who gives the increase" (see 1 Corinthians 3:7). So we'll see how things go for 2018.
With 2017 having been the first year for which I have ever had access to any kind of website statistics, many of the things in this report were a surprise to me.
Frank W Nelte