Please enter your email and website or LinkedIn to receive more information about our free and paid accounts.
Please enter your email address below and we’ll send you instructions on how to change your password.
Despite the heatwave suffered by the western United States, our fortunes at Wonderful Machine began to improve during the month of June. Although we again saw a slight decline in traffic very generally, certain features connected with the quality of traffic and user experience improved. Since the newest iteration of WonderfulMachine.com is only two months old, we must allow time for users — old and new — to become familiar with the interface and features.
Most of the site suffered modest decreases in the primary metrics during June. 7,910 users visited the site in June, which is a -7.2% decrease from the 8,524 users in May. New users decreased from 8,085 in May to 7,492 in June, a 7.3% decline. Pageviews fell from 33,446 in May to 32,347 in June (-3.3%), sessions decreased from 11,726 in May to 11,393 in June (-3.3%), and page views per session felt a -.5% decrease, 2.84 to 2.83 between May and June.
Three indicators of the quality of site traffic improved between May and June (you may recall that May was completely not good, traffic-wise), which we can all agree is cause for celebration. The number of sessions per user increased by +4.7%, from 1.38 to 1.44 between May and June. The bounce rate also decreased — remember, here’s where negative is good — from 55.3% in May to 54.8% in June (+.9%). The largest improvement is the average session duration, which increased from 3:21 to 3:51, a substantial gain of +14.6%. In other words, on average, users spent 30 more seconds on the site.
In other good news, almost all of the site event metrics showed substantial improvements compared to the month of May. The new version of WonderfulMachine.com’s Find Photographers search permits searches according to location, specialty, date, and name.
The number of photographer searches increased by +3.3%, rising from 7,357 searches in May to 7,603 searches in June. Specialty searches also increased, from May’s 1,343 to June’s 1,457. The searches by location — and this is the most frequently used search parameter — increased +18.3%, from 2,598 in May to 3,073 in June. Searches by date improved the most for what it’s worth, a whopping +26.7%, but that is going from 352 searches in May to 446 in June. Small potatoes? Name searches decreased by -19.1%, going from 692 in May to 560 in June. Searches for videographers remained nearly unchanged, with 213 in May and 214 in June (+.5%).
Wonderful Machine maintains two different blogs, both publishing articles for photographers, the Read Intel blog, and about recent projects photographers have completed (this one is for clients), the Read Published blog. During June, those blogs increased readership. The Read Intel blog had 1,444 pageviews, a +79% increase over the 806 of May. The Read Published blog had 644 pageviews during June, a +21.5 increase over the 530 it had in May. On the whole, during June, the blogs saw 11,834 pageviews, which is a +4.8% increase over the 11,284 pageviews during May.
The five most-read Read Intel articles were:
The five most-read Read Published articles were
Have questions about how we promote our photographers? Check out our Membership page. Want to know how you can get the most out of your Wonderful Machine membership? Check out our Jumpstart page or just reach out!