Judy Watson, associate dean at the J-School, asked me last week to pull together relevant usage and performance metrics for work we’re doing on the web. They’ll be a part of an annual report back to CUNY central. I thought it’d be fun to share them here too.
Data from the past year
WordPress network usage (as of June 2011)
- 481 total users (students, faculty and staff)
- 272 total websites, including the J-School main site, NYCity News Service, and dozens of class and personal websites
- 70 websites using custom domains (e.g. carmeldelshad.com or nycitynewsservice.com) for unique branding
- 144 personal websites, 43 course websites, and 66 project/publication websites
journalism.cuny.edu analytics (excluding internal IP addresses, June 2010 to June 2011)
- June 2010: 11,201 visits; 32,663 pageviews; 48.03% new visits
- July 2010: 12,317 visits; 36,532 pageviews; 46.16% new visits
- August 2010: 16,027 visits; 42,285 pageviews; 42.85% new visits
- September 2010: 20,159 visits; 55,424 pageviews; 36.60% new visits
- October 2010: 21,441 visits; 57,169 pageviews; 35.49% new visits
- November 2010: 21,557 visits; 58,810 pageviews; 37.97% new visits
- December 2010: 21,221 visits; 54,025 pageviews; 34.76% new visits
- January 2010: 21,422 visits; 55,357 pageviews; 40.26% new visits
- February 2010: 15,961 visits; 41,590 pageviews; 39.59% new visits
- March 2010: 20,055 visits; 53,755 pageviews; 43.45% new visits
- April 2010: 17,517 visits; 45,411 pageviews; 39.49% new visits
- May 2010: 16,439 visits; 42,805 pageviews; 42.53% new visits
Our Facebook Page (June 2010 to June 2011):
- 128 daily active users to 425 daily active users
- 521 total likes to 745 total likes
Our Twitter account (April 2009 to June 2011, according to Twitaholic)
- 758 followers to 2,490 followers
- 224 updates to 1,083 updates
Our videos on Vimeo (June 2010 to June 2011)
- 328,103 total loads
- 8,231 total plays
- 201 total videos
- Embedded on a total of 226 websites
- Top three videos: Sony PD-170 Tutorial (3,089 views), An Evening with Shepard Smith, Fox News Channel – May 25, 2011 (970 views), and Entrepreneurial Journalism Information Session with Jeff Jarvis and Jeremy Caplan (862 views)
Takeaways and next steps
As with any metrics, it’s hard to find the signal in the noise. Furthermore, data can be misleading if you don’t use it in controlled environments.
With that being said, I was quite surprised to see our top-ranking video on Vimeo a pretty generic camera tutorial. This is something to consider for the future. Also, I’m quite happy we have 144 students, alumni and faculty set up with personal websites, and 70 personal and project sites using custom domains.
By this Wednesday, I’m supposed to have a plan together as to what metrics and goals we’ll track for the next year. Post to come.