This is it, the big DGB review. This is where I compare this sites performance and achievements to that of 2016’s. It’s probably going to be a long one. So, make sure you give yourself enough time. Perhaps take your phone to the loo. Go on an extended lunch.
Here we go.
Major targets met
I will do my own review of the industry throughout 2017 in a future post. For now I am keeping this one firmly DGB.
At the start of 2017 I set myself three major targets in the areas of; visitors, unique visitors and page views. I looked at what my 2016 metrics were and judged accordingly.
2016 major metrics:
Total Visitors: 156,202
Total Unique visitors: 117,082
Total Page views: 199, 203
Based on these figures, I set myself these lofty goals…
2017 targets:
Projected Visitors: 170,000
Projected Unique visitors: 120,000
Projected Page views: 225,000
To be honest, I set myself two yearly goals. The first is to always drive more traffic than the year before. The second is to reach my own self imposed targets. I am happy to report that I did both…
2017 major metrics:
Total Visitors: 184,756
Total Unique Visitors: 120,224
Total Page Views: 239,982
As you can see, DGB smashed the visitor and page view targets by quite a margin. I did reach the unique visitors goal, but only just. In fact I think I reached that on December 30th, just before the end of the year! But, importantly, growth on 2016 and my self-imposed targets met.
Helping me to get there was a number of things. I was able to increase my following on social media, including Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. As it stands I have 9600+ followers on Twitter, 2400+ connections on Linkedin and nearly 200 on Facebook. This has helped me quite a lot in the past 12 months to help reach a wider audience. The infographic below will show you how much social media has contributed to traffic growth.
Another major factor was a big increase in the number of industry professionals subscribing to weekly DGB emails. They go out each Wednesday and for pretty much every Wednesday of 2017 DGB had over 1000 pages views. This was also a major contributor to traffic growth.
I am now looking at traffic levels for January, looking at last year’s traffic and seeing what targets I should set myself for 2018. I’ll be following this up with a post on my targets for DGB in 2018. It will come as no surprise that all the major metric targets will get a good bump northwards. What I can say is that if current early averages in 2018 carry on throughout the year, I’ll be breaking some almighty numbers come year end.
Full report
Here is some meat to put on the bones of that growth:
After a bit of a slow start, traffic really kicked into gear in the second half of 2017 and was pivotal in making sure DGB reached it’s yearly goals. I had a vacation at the end of June and into early July, which saw content publication drop, having an adverse effect on traffic at the end of June. But from July onwards traffic built up very well, and a number of records were broken in the months of September and October. Overall I am happy that 2017 saw growth from 2016 figures, and that my own targets were met. The rise in page views is most impressive.
Time spent on site rose over 5% as well, indicating that visitors were spending a little bit more time in 2017 reading my musings and other articles that are published on here.
I included a 2009-2017 chart to show the progress DGB has made over the past 8 years. I’m using that as motivation for this year, and to demonstrate that digital media platforms in this industry will, if they have not already, become the most powerful form of media publication.
One of the biggest traffic drivers in 2017 was social media. DGB saw a 63.62% rise in traffic driven by social media, with the biggest contributors being Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. Throughout this next year I intend to continue to build that following and help drive traffic further through those platforms.
The device split was an interesting one too. Smartphones were the most popular device of choice for browsing DGB, with desktops a close second, and the stragglers using tablets. Phones remain the most powerful media and marketing tool, and the preferred form of consumption by readers. Something to ponder on for those wondering how to adapt to this changing media landscape.
For the first time I have included stats on gender. Seven out of ten DGB readers are male (according to Google Analytics), with just three out of ten women. This is an indication of the big gap that remains within the industry. If we’re going to become more inclusive, evolve as an industry and become better, we’re going to need more women to take up roles across our sector.
Top 10 posts published in 2017
Here are the top ten most read posts published in 2017:
- Entu To Be Placed Into Administration
- Synseal Announcement Quashes Rumours
- If A Big Glazing Company Goes Bust
- Lister Trade Frames Go Into Administration
- There’s A BBC Drama Based Around A Double Glazing Showroom Coming Soon
- FIT Show 2017 LIVE
- David Leng To Leave Synseal
- Epwin Group Share Price Plummets On Half-Year Trading Update
- 14 Reasons Why You Should Install Kommerling uPVC Windows
- Latium Group Buys Entu
A pretty explosive list of posts there, many coming in the space of a short few weeks of a very tumultuous period in the window and door industry. Almost every week there was either someone leaving a company, a business going bust, a business being bought. Other than the time of the Great Recession I had not known of a period of time quite like it.
I tried hard last year to cover areas that you would find most interesting. Creating quality content on a near daily basis isn’t the easiest thing in the world to do, but I think I did my best job so far last year, and the resulting site performance shows that. I’ll cover what my plans and targets are in a new post coming up, but be sure that I am going to work just as hard to keep bringing the right sorts of content you want to read over the coming 12 months.
Thanks to everyone who read, commented, shared on social media and contributed in any other way to DGB in 2017. It all helps in creating a platform that brings the window and door industry fenestration news fit for 2018.
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