Analytics: March 2021

As in February, we saw gains across most of the basic site metrics during the month of March.

TRAFFIC

A greater number of users visited the site during March, increasing +3.3% from 11,032 users in the previous 31-day period to 11,399 during the month of March. Similarly, the site saw more new users, pageviews, and sessions during March, with gains of +2.6, +6.9, and +2.8% respectively. Those gains were even more significant in relation to March 2020, over which March 2021 increased by +12.5% more users, +13.5% new users, +16% more pageviews, and +15.5% more sessions.

Sessions per user lowered slightly by -.5%, pageviews per session increased by +4.1%, and then average session duration dropped by -10%. The bounce rate went up slightly by +.5%, which is contrary to our wishes, as a lower bounce rate is always better.

SITE EVENTS

During March visitors viewed photographer profiles +24.7% more than they had during the previous period. They viewed profiles 13,616 times during March, as opposed to only 10,917 times during February. Even in relation to March 2020 the gains were tremendous: +22.4% more profiles were viewed.

Photographer searches showed a slight drop, from 5,195 during February to 4,945 during March—a decrease of -4.8% (yet a +15.8% increase over March 2020). Searches by specialty decreased by -5.3%, and searches by location decreased -4.4%.

Click-throughs, in which a user follows the link from a photographer’s profile to their site, dropped by -7.8% during March. That is still a +4.3% increase over March 2020.

ACQUISITION

The majority of Wonderful Machine’s traffic (46.9%) comes from the organic search channel — that means search engines like Google, Bing, etc. The next largest amount (31.7%) comes directly — when users type the URL into the address bar of the browser — and then from social platforms (10.1%), referrals (6.7%), and paid searches (4.2%), respectively.

If you consult the above image, you’ll see that traffic from social platforms had a much higher bounce rate (+23.6 more than the site average) than that arriving from search engines or directly. Traffic from referrals, by contrast, has bounce rate -25.6% lower than the site average.

SITE BLOGS

Wonderful Machine has two different site blogs, devoted to projects that our photographers have completed — we used to call this the “client blog,” but on the new site it is called “Find Published” — and article germane to the business of being a professional photographer — formerly the “member blog” but now “Find Intel.”

The “Find Published” blog saw a modest adjustment of -3.5% in visitors during March. The most popular articles on “Find Published,” in order of popularity, were:

• A SECRET FROM THE OLDEN DAYS: MARGO MORITZ AND TOM KUBIK TRAVEL CROSS-COUNTRY VIA AMTRAK, written by Varun Raghupathi and published on March 12.
• DOUG LEVY FINDS GOLD WITH VISTAPRINT, written by Shannon Stewart and published on March 5.
• NOT MY MOTHER’S PIE: MARK WEINBERG TEAMS UP WITH ERIN MCDOWELL TO CREATE THE BOOK ON PIE, written by Shannon Stewart and published on March 22.

The “Find Intel” blog also saw an adjustment in the number of visitors during March of -4.6%. The most popular articles on “Find Intel,” in order of popularity, were:

• EXPERT ADVICE: WRITING A PHOTOGRAPHER BIO, written by Lindsay Thompson and published February 30, 2019.
• NEW PPP MONEY FOR SOLE PROPRIETORS, written by Varun Raghupathi and published February 24, 2021.
• EXPERT ADVICE: WORDS FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS, written by Victoria Cagol and published February 17, 2021.

Check back next month to see how the new version of our site has shaken up our site’s analytics.