ZHPMafia.com Visit Quality

[Marcus-SanDiego]

Some really interesting stuff -- to me, at least -- regarding traffic quality is starting to develop.

These were the top 5 referring sites yesterday (meaning the traffic that landed here came from these places):

1. zhpregistry.net
2. forums.bimmerforums.com
3. us.mg1.mail.yahoo.com
4. by151w.bay151.mail.live.com
5. facebook.com

What's interesting is that the traffic from zhpregistry is high quality. The bounce rate was just 5.26% (meaning that the person visited more than one page once he or she got here). Yet, the vast majority of those visitors do not result in a conversion to ZHPMafia.com (person does not join site).

Meanwhile, the lowest-quality visitors are still coming from bimmerforums. Lots of visits but they continue to have the highest bounce rate. Since I've been tracking this metric, more than 56% of the traffic from that site bounces. Ouch.

The mail servers are likely the result of subscribed-thread notifications. Not surprisingly, the bounce rates are very low for this group. Ditto Facebook.

[Rayzah Blade]

bf.c is rubbish anyways. bunch of tattletales and know it alls. I like what we have here :)

Edit: not all of bf.c is this way. there are quite a few respectable and knowledgeable members there, hopefully we can sway them to add their input on this site as well. The off topic guys and likeness thereof however, can linger amongst their own.

[Marcus-SanDiego]

Rayzah, I saw the latest over there (revoked). They should just bring you back into the fold.

[Rayzah Blade]

Ha, as soon as I am allowed to pm again, I will be sending Kevlar a large email with tons of info pertaining to my account and it's uses/abuses. Mainly that I cannot be kept away, and will not tolerate the mindless trolls that peruse the forums, whilst offering (what I think anyways) is a large array of knowledge of not just e46's, but bimmers and cars and general.
To be 'tattled' on by members who are five years deep in the forum, yet have less than a hundred posts(not that post count matters, but it shows that said member is not contributing anything, albeit good or bad, to the community it is a part of) is childish and petty, and should be dealt with more sternly than a person who merely has an addiction to members I'm fond of, and a car I'm passionate about.
/rant

[danewilson77]

Rayzah, I saw the latest over there (revoked). They should just bring you back into the fold.

Ohhhh....I like the sig.^^^^^

[danewilson77]

To be 'tattled' on by members who are five years deep in the forum, yet have less than a hundred posts(not that post count matters, but it shows that said member is not contributing anything, albeit good or bad, to the community it is a part of) is childish and petty, and should be dealt with more sternly than a person who merely has an addiction to members I'm fond of, and a car I'm passionate about.
/rant

^ Agree. Glad to see ya back on...

[Marcus-SanDiego]

Rayzah, not sure why you'd want to be a part of a site like that.

[Marcus-SanDiego]

Ohhhh....I like the sig.^^^^^

Thank you, sir. The ZHP MAFIA portion of the sig came from you back in the day. I thought I'd resurrect it.

[danewilson77]

I still like eeeet.

[Marcus-SanDiego]

You're free to use it anywhere you'd like. That's a message that anyone is free to share. :biggrin

[danewilson77]

It would actually be pretty neat on a business card :o

[Marcus-SanDiego]

I don't have a clean enough image. I have already been trying to put a business card together.

By the way, to get this thread back on track, I will be posting yesterday's data here. Be right back.

[Marcus-SanDiego]

Yesterday's top referring sites -- along with bounce rates (in parentheses):

1. zhpregistry.net (26.67%)
2. localhost:55xxx (23.08%)
3. forums.bimmerforums.com (54.55%)
4. by151w.bay151.mail.live.com (28.57%)
5. us.mg1.mail.yahoo.com (20%)

The overall bounce rate yesterday, for the entire site, was 28.79%.

[Marcus-SanDiego]

January 12, 2011 visit quality:

1. forum.e46fanatics.com
2. zhpregistry.net
3. forums.bimmerforums.com
4. facebook.com
5. by151w.bay151.mail.live.com

Bimmerforums continues to lead the pack when it comes to low-quality visits. Not only did 62.5% of the visits bounce, the average time spent on the site was 29 seconds. It doesn't get much weaker than that.

On the other hand, there was a brake thread over at e46fanatics that led a lot of people to ZHPMafia.com. Some 58% of the traffic bounced (see the definition for bounce in first post of this thread) but at least they spent nearly four minutes on the site (compare that to the 29 seconds from bimmerforums). Unfortunately, not everyone at e46fanatics was a fan of ZHPMafia.com. Several people made negative comments (http://forum.e46fanatics.com/showthread.php?t=816117) about the site's name. Shocker.

Because of the low-quality visits from the two BMW forums that landed in the top five yesterday, the overall bounce rate for ZHPMafia.com was 37.9%, well above the site's historical bounce rate of 23.5%.

zhpregistry.net, meanwhile, remains a solid source for traffic. Those visitors view more pages and, historically, stick around the site a bit longer. The bounce rate yesterday was 14.29%.

[Rayzah Blade]

:rofl those comments were obviously made by younger chaps who have no clue to what the mafia, of any nature, truly is.

[Marcus-SanDiego]

Hehe. If they haven't heard of the ZHP Mafia by now, they haven't been paying attention. The name has only been floating around for 5+ years.

[C Withers Media]

ZHPmafia- a reference to the elitist attitude often found by those who owned ZHPs when the E46 was still a big deal. Collectively the largest conglomeration of douchebags on the planet. ie...worse than M3 owners when it comes to the 'awesomeness' of their cars.

They isolated themselves so far away from all of the bmw owners that they became a little mafia that nobody on the forums liked and they would troll together acting snobbish while the rest of the forum world giggled at their idiocracy.

Obviously, this forum is reshaping that perception and the group that sticks around here is content in knowing that to a degree they are mocking themselves and their 3 series in jest..


As far as bounce rates go,

bf.c- members need pictures...lots of pictures....most cant read. Don't want them here anyway, its like inviting the roaches to dinner.

e46fanatics.com-the new elitist douchebags that resemble the former zhpmafia. the honda-tech of the bmw world filled with people hanging on to the glory of yesteryear that their 10 yr old sedan brought them.

[Marcus-SanDiego]

I think that probably nails it, Casey.

[danewilson77]

I think that probably nails it, Casey.

Right on the head!

[Marcus-SanDiego]

So, just looking at my bounce rates from yesterday.

Bimmerforums and e46fanatics continue to provide low-quality visits. Bimmerfest continues to provide high-quality visits.

Of those three sites, I do believe that we have more in common with Bimmerfest. The crowd tends to be more mature there. The site tends to attract more no-nonsense members (vis-a-vis the other two sites).

It would appear that we simply have more to offer those at Bimmerfest -- because they tend to stick around the site and peruse multiple posts and threads.

Yesterday:

Bimmerfest members, on average, viewed 20 pages per visit. They also stayed on the site for 16 minutes. In comparison, members from bimmerforums viewed 2 pages while spending less than a minute on the site. Similarly, e46fanatics viewed 1.8 pages and spent 1.35 minutes on the site.

[Marcus-SanDiego]

Google, meanwhile, continues to be a very good source of traffic for us. The bounce rate is always about 20%. Visitors view plenty of pages (25 per visitor yesterday). And visitors stay on the site for quite a bit of time (more than 20 minutes per visit yesterday). We're also getting new members as a result of these Google searches.

To those who have joined this site as a result of a Google search: glad you liked the site enough to join. We're glad to have you.

[Marcus-SanDiego]

Analyzing historical statistics for the three main sites that get referred to ZHPMafia.com:

Bimmerfest: bounce rate of 19.35% (less than the site average); average time spent on site is 12 minutes and 59 seconds; page views per visit is 15.5; and some 54.84% of the time, the visit is new.

Bimmerforums: bounce rate of 45.19% (nearly twice as high as site average); average time spent on site is four minutes and 19 seconds; page views per visit is five; and some 58.18% of the time, the visit is new.

E46fanatics: bounce rate of 66.67% (nearly three times as high as site average); average time spent on site is three minutes and 21 seconds; page views per visit is 2.28; and some 87.7% of the time, the visit is new.

I remain unsurprised by these statistics. Some of the most anti-ZHP Mafia discussions have cropped up at e46fanatics. It would appear that we don't have much to offer those members here -- based on the historical figures.

[kayger12]

E46fanatics: bounce rate of 66.67% (nearly three times as high as site average); average time spent on site is three minutes and 21 seconds; page views per visit is 2.28; and some 87.7% of the time, the visit is new.



Pretty much matches my bounce rate and time on site when I go to e46 fanatics...

[Marcus-SanDiego]

I think the crowd has just got a lot younger there. Many of the old timers have gone on to other things. Whatever it is, though, those guys don't stick around this site much.

[Marcus-SanDiego]

This just in: e46fanatics members were interested in our site yesterday. Those users spent 16 minutes on the site yesterday and viewed more than 13 pages per visit.

I suspect that ZHPRegistry.net had a good day yesterday, since the biggest referrer of traffic came from that site.

The bimmerforums guys bounced at a 17.89% rate yesterday, which is good, but they didn't spend much time on the site once they got here. They spent about three minutes on the site, while visiting nearly five pages.

Yesterday, meanwhile, was our second best day on the site in terms of visitors, consolidating Wednesday's performance, which set a record.

[nk_zhp]

Yup, registry traffic yesterday was 2nd best since inception, only second to the day before by just 1 visit.

Guys, the real driver of traffic is going to be new for sale listings, if you know anyone selling please recommend. In terms of bang for a buck, you get cars.com or autotrader style listings at a price of craigslist. I am starting to see repeat visitors keeping an eye on the for sale section, meaning there are people looking for a car.

edit: I added a new feature to the site showing the # of views for each listing (left side while looking at a particular listing). These are session views, so re-fresh does not produce a bump in value.
edit #2: Today is going to be the record for traffic... I can already tell :)

[Marcus-SanDiego]

NK, the traffic trends were the same for me. The day before yesterday we had record traffic. Yesterday was number two.

If you're having a good day at your place, you can figure it's going well here, too. Of course, if it's going well here, I imagine it's going well there.

[nk_zhp]

Yup, it's one of those cases where 2+2=5

[Johnmadd]

I told you guys I rep Bimmerfest, they have people that really know stuff and not just forum posers.

[Marcus-SanDiego]

So, Dane was interested in quality of visit data for yesterday.

Here goes.

I'm really pleased to see that most of the traffic yesterday was generated by the core group of members. There was no huge spike of new visits or a particular event that drew people to the site. It was just good, old fashioned member-based traffic.

The numbers:

New traffic accounted for 22% of all visits yesterday, below our historical average of 27.2%.

Our bounce rate was 26.7%, just a little bit higher than our 24.6% average.

A nice factoid is that our top five sources of traffic had bounce rates of lower than 50%, which includes all BMW forums that have typically had high bounce rates.

Our direct and organic traffic accounted for 69% of all traffic yesterday. That's great.

Our search-engine traffic was just a hair under 30%, which is excellent -- and above our average of 24.9%.

In sum, yesterday's traffic was largely the result of member-based interest in the site. Members simply visited the site yesterday and generated a boat-load of page views in the process.

EDIT: just doing a little more digging into the numbers, I see how tremendously important Google has been to our growth.

Since January 2, 2011, the home page has been viewed 139,172 times via 43 sources. Google traffic comprises 43,398 of those page views. The bounce rate for that traffic is a paltry 13.52%.

If you want to be a player, a site has to generate a lot of new content that people are interested in reading. So far, so good at ZHPMafia.com.

[danewilson77]

So, Dane was interested in quality of visit data for yesterday.

Since January 2, 2011, the home page has been viewed 139,172 times via 43 sources.

I would think this alone would be enough to ensure our Homepage is and remains sezzy.

[Marcus-SanDiego]

The home page is the most important piece of real estate, DW. That's why I've hired someone to create some nice looking graphics.

You only get to make one first impression. :biggrin

That's also why I'm so anal with regard to how we treat one another. I have no doubt that our members make a great first impression here.

[danewilson77]

The home page is the most important piece of real estate, DW. That's why I've hired someone to create some nice looking graphics.

You only get to make one first impression. :biggrin

That's also why I'm so anal with regard to how we treat one another. I have no doubt that our members make a great first impression here.

You read my mind.

[Marcus-SanDiego]

Now that we've received a visit from every state in the United States (including visits from DC), I thought I'd share some of the bounce rates.

I'll only use the top-ten states -- based on visits.

Of the ten states that visit ZHPMafia.com the most, Virginia is the most loyal state to the site (and, yes, Dane resides in Virginia). The bounce rate is just 12.23%. Oregon, meanwhile, is the state (in the top ten) that is most likely to bounce (remember, a bounce occurs when the visitor looks at one page -- without looking at a second page).

State with most visits -- bounce rates
1. California 27.79%
2. Florida 24.46%
3. Massachusetts 20.59%
4. Pennsylvania 29.49%
5. North Carolina 18.00%
6. New Jersey 24.42%
7. Virginia 12.23%
8. Georgia 26.75%
9. New York 32.92%
10. Oregon 37.33%