January 30 – February 28, 2010
Wow! Sunday was UTBA’s 30th day in existence. So, to show you how much we’ve grown, here are some stats from those first 30 days (mostly courtesy of Google Analytics). We think that you’ll find this information interesting because it paints a picture of the types of readers that UTBA is attracting. Producers and publicity agents for companies and productions may also be interested in this information because UTBA may be a useful place for them to advertise their show.
Visitors
We have had 1,022 unique visitors making 2,007 separate visits to the UTBA site. They have viewed a total of 4,787 pages on the UTBA site (2.39 pages/visit or 4.68 pages/unique visitor). The average person spends 2 minutes and 23 seconds on each visit to our site.
The most popular pages for our visitors are the main page, followed by the reviews for SCERA’s Jonah and the Great Fish, Sandy City’s Barefoot in the Park, Westminster College’s The Vagina Monologues, and finally SLAC’s Too Much Memory. What makes this list interesting is that the only one of those four plays to receive a review from anyone else was Too Much Memory. We’re happy to see that, because it shows that we’re filling a niche with our reviews.
Obviously, the majority of visitors come from Utah (83.4%). But we’re also seeing visits from Texas, California, New York and Colorado (which combined represent 10.1% of visits). In total, we’ve received visits from 34 states and 10 foreign countries.
Within Utah, Salt Lake City has provided us with the most visits to the web site (38.9%), with Provo (15.3%), Orem (13.0%), Midvale (7.2%), and Springville (6.0%) rounding out the top 5. Because most of the reviews we’ve written are from Salt Lake and Utah counties, it’s unsurprising that these counties provide us with the bulk of our Utah visitors. As we expand to other reviewing productions outside of those areas, we expect the readership outside Salt Lake and Utah counties to increase.
We’re pleasantly surprised at the visitor loyalty to the site. Almost half of the visits to this site (49.13%) are from people who have previously visited UTBA. This proportion has risen steadily, even while the number of visitors each week has been rising. This means that we’re both picking up new readers and old readers are coming back.
Sources of traffic
Over a third of our visits (36.1%) come from links posted on Facebook. We think that our 270 fans Facebook fans have been posting links to reviews on their friends’ Facebook profiles and that you’re clicking on our links that show up in your news feeds. But almost as many visits (31.6%) are direct visits. (This means that many visitors are either bookmarking UTBA on their browser or are typing in the address themselves. We think that this is another sign that we’re filling a vital niche in the Utah theatre community and that our visitors like what they’re seeing at UTBA.) Other sources of internet traffic in the top 5 are Google searches (11.6%), blog links (6.3%), and email links (2.8%).
Even though we’re only a month old, it’s clear that UTBA is growing and is serving a vital need in the Utah theatre community. We hope you’ll help us out by continuing to spread the word about the site or becoming a reviewer. You may also consider advertising your show with UTBA, just like the Mortal Fools Theatre Project has. (Yep, that’s their banner for The Glass Menagerie up there. Support them by buying your tickets online and seeing their show.)
It’s our hope that this theater resource will help build audiences, raise quality, and nudge other theater review sources to increase their own coverage. Remember, this is just the beginning of UTBA!
