Since I fractured three ribs mountain-biking, December was painful. As it turns out the website’s analytics had slightly better fortunes. Although the general traffic numbers were down in relation to last month, the quality of traffic (pages per session, average duration, bounce rate) all improved! Photographer searches by name also increased, although photographer searches, in general, were down.
In the last month (December) of the plague year 2021, 7,913 users visited wonderfulmachine.com, which is a -22.3% decrease over the number of users during November (10,187). Ouch! As it turns out, the comparison is worse when directed toward December 2020 (the first plague year of the twenty-first century). Even amidst the halcyon early days of the plague, the site enjoyed 10,322 users, making December 2021’s number a -23.3% drop! (Personally I’m a big fan of a certain John Cougar Mellencamp song, namely, “Hurts So Good,” so for me, it’s not so bad!)
New users, pageviews, and sessions analytics also decreased during December by -22.2, -18.8, and -20.8%. These decreases were not so dire in relation to December 2020, against each respectively fell -24.7, -10.5, and -17.4%.
The quality of site traffic saw uniform improvements during December 2021. Sessions per user increased to 1.44, a +1.9% improvement, and pageviews per session increased to 2.59, a +2.5% improvement. The average session duration went from 3:14 in November 2020 to 3:42, a +14.3% improvement. Finally, the bounce rate also improved over November when it fell to only 59.1 from 60.4, a -2.2% gain. Remember that bounce rates are better when they are lower. In comparison to December 2020, each of these numbers also improved but by much greater margins: +7.8% (sessions per user), +8.4% (pageviews per session), +97.4%! (average session duration), and -12.1% (bounce rate).
One of the unique features of WonderfulMachine.com is the elaborate search functions integrated into our website. The search function has been a success and seems destined to advance the fortunes of the company and our photographers over the long run, even if this month they decreased over last month.
During the month of December on 4,322 photographer searches were conducted, being a -11.6% drop from the 4,890 searches of November. Specialty searches also declined by -35.7% to 1,056.
Location searches are far and away from the most used search function. In December users sought photographers by location 3,595 times, which is an increase of +5.9% over November’s paltry 3,392. Date searches increased by +22.9%, going from 1,811 in November to 2,271 in December. Name searches also increased. 2,073 name searches were conducted in December, a +24.7% increase over the 1,663 searches of November.
For several months now we have finally implemented the ability to track how many users clicked on each photographer’s website. If you’re curious, holler. Whenever users follow any links related to a photographer profile, this is considered a site event that we track.
Users clicked on photographers’ websites 4,145 times in December 2021, which is a decrease of -18.9%. Instagram links were followed -32.7% fewer times (846 < 1,258). LinkedIn link followings increased by +28.5% (415 > 323). Bios and email links, as well as agent email, Wikipedia, and IMDB.com links changed by only nominal amounts.
Wonderful Machine has two different blogs. The first, called Intel, is designed to provide information germane to the business of being a commercial or editorial photographer. The second, called Published, promotes recent usually published projects by our member photographers.
As a whole, over December, the blogs received 10,488 pageviews, which is a -9.4% decrease from the 11,569 pageviews of the previous period.
On the Intel blog, the most popular posts were:
On the Published blog, the most popular posts were: