Saturday, October 20, 2007

Hits And Visit Depth On Weekends

Do you guys find that your hits go down but your pages/visit go up on the weekends? It seems logical enough, that fewer people are web surfing, but those that are have more time to visit deeply. Anyone have suggestions for how to drive more folks to your site on those lazy weekend days?


This Post was written by Michael Natkin from Herbivoracious.com (formerly The Vegetarian Foodie)

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Early Saturday morning, post an article headed: "Britney Spears Ate My Globe Artichokes". That will generate you some weekend traffic.

Anonymous said...

My traffic is usually down by about 25% on weekends, across the board.

I gave up posting new reviews on weekends, as I didn't think it did much for me and I kind of like the relief of not having to post. (Though I do small posts on weekends, just not the longer 500 word + ones with photos.)

I've found my top two days are Tuesday and Wednesday. The percentage of uniques to page loads is pretty consistent through the week as well. Weekends have more google search traffic as a proportion of the readers.

I've found that a large number of my readers are students (college), so that explains the weekday concentration of traffic. I'm also guessing that I have a lot of bored office workers visiting. Your mileage may vary.

Jennifer Maiser said...

Just piggy-backing on what Cybele said ... I initially thought that posts put up on weekends were viewed less, but have found that over the long run the number of hits on weekend posts even out with everything else and are driven by content over posting day.

meathenge said...

Ya know, I wouldn't really worry about it. Spend more time making your posts rock.

That being said, I really enjoy posting on the weekends. Sure there are less people hitting your site, but the weekend cruisers need love to. It's almost as though they're actually taking time to sit down and surf. Whereas during the week we're usually at work just goofing off when we can. I find that the comments I get on the weekends are more thoughtful, not just "nice post!"

I like posting on Sundays. It gives people a nice closure to the weekend, then it'll give everyone something to peruse first thing Monday morning. Kinda like a nice cup of coffee to sit with for 10 minutes.

I have spoken,

Biggles

Anonymous said...

The big thing is to know where the traffic comes from on weekends. Since I know it's search traffic, they're not coming for new content, they're coming for the archives ... which gives me a break.

If you have viewers who are reading your front page on weekends, it would probably behoove you to post then.

The important thing is if you're posting regularly, your readers will find your content on their on terms, when they want to read it. So if your two big posting days are Tues & Thurs, those posts will still be there fresh-like on Saturday/Sunday when they visit.

The visitors that I do get on weekends that are "returning" folks, I think, are weekly readers, not daily ones. So they'll just gobble up all the content on the home page and move along.

meathenge said...

Hey Cybele,

Thought provoking. Sat down and thought about where my traffic comes from and for what purpose.

I think I post for my friends/commenters. While I do and have had stat counters and readers for my logs, I don't really pay any attention to it. Unless, I'm getting traffic from a new source such as a newspaper/magazine/blog article that someone wrote.

When I can post on a Sunday and receive 13 comments, it makes a great day indeed. Even if I only received 13 hits for Sunday.

Biggles

Anonymous said...

I'm with Biggles. Make your posts rock and don't worry about the hits. The readers will come if your site rocks.

On weekends, I tend to post lighter stuff, like pictures of my cats or kids or something like that. Stuff to catch my friends and family up on what is going on at Chez Barb and Zak, and folks really seem to be into that.

I've had folks I don't even know link to Kat's baby pictures on days when she is overwhelmingly cute. So, that is nice.

But most of my harder hitting stuff is on weekdays.

Another thing I agree with--I love starting conversations with my readers--thoughtful comments rock, and make me all warm inside.

Anonymous said...

My traffic grows through the week, increasing from Monday through Thursday, then dropping to about Tuesday levels on Friday. Weekends are typically pretty slow, also about 25% lower than a Monday.

Most of my readers are at work, judging from the ip/hosts I see in my stats.

I don't notice any difference in page views, other than obvious first time visitors tend to look around a bit more than repeaters.