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July was a hard, hard month, beginning with the protests that rocked the nation after the killing of George Floyd and ending with excitement drumming up about Joe Biden’s VP pick. Wonderful Machine saw trends from June continuing, with modest increases in site events and slight decreases in traffic as a whole.
Wonderful Machine users declined by -6.3% during the month of July, from 10,078 in June to 9,441. New users dropped by -6%, and returning users were reduced by -5 between the months of June and July. Those drops are unsurprisingly lower in relation to July of 2019 (before this whole COVID thing), -23, -21.6, and -27% reductions, repectively. The site also observed a diminuation of the number of pageviews and sessions: -.8 and -6%.
However, session per user (1.33), pageviews per session (2.69), average session duration (2:12 minutes), and the bounce rate (64.2%) all improved, by +.3, +5, +3, and -2.4% (remember that a decreasing bounce rate is good) respectively. Let the backslapping commence!
Users clicked-through 3.031 times during the month of June. This category describes when users follow the links from member photographers’ profiles to their respective websites. That number is up by +4% since June of 2020 but down -48% since July 2019. Users searched photographers according to specialties 6,137 times during July, which constitutes an increase of +1.2% over June 2020 and a decrease of -45% over July 2019 respectively. Profile views (7,759) rose by +16.4% since June and fell by -42% since July 2019. Photographer searches (2,998) decreased by -1.5% since June and by -39% since July 2019.
So in relation to last year, back before COVID and the corresponding effects to the economy, the numbers are disappointing, but in relation to June and the beginning of this new economic outlook these numbers aren’t bad at all.
The percentage of users that arrived at WonderfulMachine.com from search engines (57%) decreased by -18% since July 2019, and the percentage of users arriving directly to the site (21.5%) decreased by -31 percent. Referrals (9.3%) stayed the same since last year, but traffic from social media (6.8%) and from our email campaigns (5.5%), like our Creative in Place initiative, decreased by -22 and -53%, respectively, over last year.
Like in previous months, the majority of our users (58.6%) were located in the United States during the month of July, followed by India and the United Kingdom (13 and 4.2%, respectively). The five major metropolitan areas from which our users hailed were New York City, New York; Los Angeles, California; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Chicago, Illinois; and London, United Kingdom.
Wonderful Machine maintains six different forms of social media accounts including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, and YouTube. Facebook has consistently directed the lion’s share of traffic (of social media sources) to our site (56.1%). On Facebook we have nearly 6,915 followers. Our daily posts garnered similar attention to previous months (unfortunately Facebook’s analytics are quite limited in relation to those of Google Analytics, for example). The most popular post promoted Michael David Wilson’s fascinating documenting of Maine centenarians. The second most popular post spotlighted Alex Buisse’s Garmin Motorcycle GPS work.
Our Instagram feed had 14,127 followers during the month of July, which was a modest increase over June. Mexico City, Mexico-based photographer Rodrigo Ceballos‘ playful image of a food photographer’s faux pas was the most popular Instagram image, reaching 3,259 viewers. The second most popular image promoted the Creative In Place: Outdoor/ Adventure results, with 1,732 views.
WonderfulMachine.com has two different blogs. The number of visitors to our client blog — the blog featuring spotlight articles on recent projects by member photographers — decreased by -12.3% since June and increased by +15% between this year and last. As well, our member blog — the blog devoted to issues of interest to member photographers (not necessarily clients) — saw a slight decline of -2% since June and -28% since July 2019.
The most popular member blog posts were
The most popular client blog posts were
Check back next month for more hard-hitting analyses of the economy translated into web analytics data!