We have been so guarded about protecting the identity of our members and readers and gone to such great lengths not to know ourselves who you are…But, we felt we may need to make some changes with respect to the site and we could only do that if we actually had statistics to do so.

Most sites gather them whether you see them or not…If a site has a forum, certainly they will look at their posters as a measure of success…it seemingly makes sense to do so…However, it may be, as we have found, a mistake only judging your site by its posters……

We have a forum, so of course we did so as well. Not having a great many posters, we began to wonder if we were receiving visitors for our informational pages as well, beyond what we could actually see.Taking into consideration we also have a bit of a different site in that, it is rather eclectic (to say the least) we needed to know if people were finding us, how, reading us, returning, or just hit and runs, if we were going to figure out our future direction. All readers and viewers have different reasons for landing on any site and we needed to know what that was for us.

Therefore, in April we put into place a stat counter on all of wiredfwcmaine’s pages in order to glean information that would help us decide our future. I’ve only just looked at the stats for the first thirty days. As mentioned we were most interested in searches, what keywords were being used, how many page reads, if posting links etc, mattered, entry and exist pages as well as referrals. We had no interest in who you were or your personal information or how many you were in numbers. Only that the information being offered to the viewer, no matter what it might be, was of interest to you.

I’ll not share most of the information learned, numbers, keywords (topics searched and visited) etc. except to say; the first 500 visits from stat counter are free. We honestly didn’t think we’d use them all! I mean really, if you type us into Alexa and the others, they would have you think we didn’t exist and the only thing searched for on the site was “sketch.” By day five it was necessary to upgrade to 1,500, (there is a cost beyond 500 and it was happily paid though only for a quarter length of time) and we quickly upgraded again to the next grouping of numbers for yet another fee, happily paid again.

Searches: Throwing out all searches for Em’s pages, (as we had stats for those) and only taking into consideration serious informational searches for the rest of the site, the month numbered over a hundred and fifty-six entries (searches) in thirty days. We had over the roof page reads compared to the number of visitors and learned that while you don’t wish to post, you do read just about everything on the site and dedicatedly return even when there is no activity.

We have been happily, no, gleefully surprised and genuinely grateful for those of you who arrive here, return and keep us in your sites. (Get it?..sites?)

So, thanks to you, we will continue to do what we do…the way we do and hope you will continue to return as you do as well.

Thank you for making it all worthwhile!

Kindest,

Emily

Emily,

Stats are good but don't become dependent on them.

Thank you for the response. Hope to see you here more often

Sky

Thanks Sky. No worries there. Depending on "stats" would require focus and discipline, (as in, I'd actually need to read them)...two qualities I clearly lack!....Good hearing from you. Emily