I'm not sure that the Kenilworth Chess Club's Annual Business Meeting will be held tonight (even if The Chess Coroner is optimistic) given that the expected snow significantly lowers the likelihood of a quorum. But in case that meeting is held, I thought I'd issue a report on the state of the club's website, which has continued to grow in popularity, serving its function as a web portal for many chess fans.
We do not keep extensive web stats for the main Kenilworth site since I've never bothered to install a tracker (it's not like we are selling ads, after all). Our host gives us some useful stats -- though they are confined to page view traffic and do not tell you how many individuals visited the site. The following statistics reflect the state of things as of December 12, 2007. Since we have half of a month left to the year, our numbers will likely be 1/24th higher.
The website has continued to grow in popularity since I started it back in 2005. We have had 642,370 page views this year, as of this writing, which projects to about 670,000 for the year, or nearly double our numbers last year.
The monthly views as of December 12, 2007, suggest that (but for a dip around
September) site traffic is trending upward.
September) site traffic is trending upward.
Daily views for November 2007 suggest wide fluctuations from day to day, with weekends showing low numbers and weekdays (especially Mondays and Wednesdays in my experience) seeing significantly higher numbers.
The Kenilworthian weblog tracks more information about its visitors. It has been ranked by Blogshares in the top ten of chess blogs for most of the year and rose as high as #6 recently. The blog accounts for only about 20% of the page views for our site as a whole, but is likely one of the main engines driving site traffic.
More detailed blog stats can be seen by clicking on "View My Stats" beneath the StatCounter icon near the bottom of the right-hand nav bar of this blog.
The Chess Coroner also tracks visitors through StatCounter, and John Moldovan reflected on his "Blog Stats" extensively in a September posting. No specific stats are kept for The Center Square or KCC Minutes blogs.
Overall, I think our site is doing great and is probably among the better chess portals on the web. Not bad for an annual investment of $130 or so. Whether or not the website is encouraging attendance or improving membership is tough to judge. My own feeling is that the site helps to stabilize membership but may even lower attendance, especially since members can learn so much about what's happening at the club without showing up. But I'll leave such speculation to others...
4 comments:
Congratulations for an excellent, positive blog.
GoStats is a great tracker. (better than statcounter imho)
Has anyone come to the club saying they learned about it here?
I wish some of the Baltimore area clubs had blogs. Then I'd know where the most action is.
in response to gorckat, I came to KCC because of the web site and I am certain that the Kenilworthian and Chess Coroner blogs have a positive impact on membership and attendance. It's a great site.
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