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January 2022 brought good news to sports fans: I went mountain biking for the first time in a month (since I broke three ribs last month doing so), and I broke no ribs. In a strange parallel, Wonderful Machine’s website also thrived during January, both in respect of the number of users and the quality of interactions.
December 2021, like Decembers years past, saw the number of users decline on wonderfulmachine.com when all of our photographers, art buyers, and clients decided to celebrate the holiday season and New Year’s. So January 2022 was bound to see improvement. And it did.
The site gained +31.4% more users in January (10,401) than in December and even +6.9% more than January 2021 (remember that exciting time?). Pageviews (37,927) and sessions also increased in January 2022 by +29% and +31.9%, respectively, while when compared to the previous January pageviews had dropped by -1.7% (some 600 less) but sessions had still increased by +12.6%.
In terms of the quality of traffic, the numbers equivocated. Sessions per user increased by a trifling +0.3%, pageviews per session decreased by -2.1%, average session duration decreased by -16% (ouch), and the bounce rate worsened as it grew by +1.7% (from 59.1% in December to 60.1% in January). Remember, a lower bounce rate is always better.
But in comparison to January 2021, these numbers are mostly salutary: sessions per user grew by +5.3%, pageviews per session fell by -12.7%, average session duration increased by +23%, and the bounce rate has fallen by -4.4%.
One of the many great features of our new and improved website (since April 2021) is enhanced search functionality. While searching for photographers is always a good time, was it always as much fun? If the numbers are to be believed, no.
During January 2022 photographer searches increased by a middling +1.4%. Specialty searches, which one might think would be the mainstay of our searches (but is not), increased by +37.2%! Booyah!
Location searches are far and away from the most frequently used search (as I put it to my SEO clients repeatedly and simultaneously channel the savant Ricky Bobby, if you’re not somewhere, you’re nowhere… although I hate to say it mine is logically defensible). These searches increased by +2.5%. Name searches fell by -25.8%. But hey, what’s in a name?
For several months now we have been tracking how many users clicked on each photographer’s website. If you’re curious about yours, please inquire. Whenever users follow any links related to a photographer profile, this is considered a site event.
Users clicked on photographers’ website links 4,944 times during January 2022, which is an increase of a whopping +19.3%. Instagram links were also clicked more, +14.4%. Users did not, however, click on LinkedIn links as much; in fact, they did it -27.9% fewer times. Bio clicks dropped by -9.3% (folks, I’m available to write your bio…check out what I did for Luis Erazo). Users intended to email photographers +10.9% more times during January!
December 2021 was a bad month for the website blogs (although to be fair it wasn’t the editors’ fault), but January was a positively freaking awesome month.
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 projects (that were either published or used commercially) by our member photographers.
As a whole, over January the blogs received 15,100 pageviews, a +43.8% increase over the 10,488 pageviews of the previous period. Great job Liz, Steph, Polly et al. I wrote a couple of articles myself too!
On the Intel blog, the most popular posts were:
On the Published blog, the most popular posts were: