Motueka Online visitor numbers reach new records

July 1st, 2011
[by David Armstrong]

Motueka Online last month broke its record, held since last summer, for website visitor numbers and in doing so topped two target numbers, thanks probably to the use of social media to extend its reach.

In June this site received 8198 visits, up by almost 10% on the monthly average for the first five months of the year. More significantly, the number of unique visitors (discounting return visits by individuals) topped a long-held goal of 3000, reaching 3015 in June. This means that 3015 individual people looked at the site at least once during June.

Rough calculations indicate that on average visitors looked at the site 2.7 times in the month. They looked at a total of 27,044 pages, suggesting an average page view of 3.3 pages per visit. The site now has just under 1100 pages on line, growing by approximately 2 pages per day. It has been operating for 16 months.

The viewership statistics make quite interesting reading. I've placed these at the end of this article. Many groups now have pages on the site, and if you would like to know how many people have visited your specific pages then please email me at with your request.

There could be several reasons for the recent rise in site viewers, including a slowly increasing awareness of the existence of Motueka Online. One likely factor has been the placing of pertinent updates on Our Town Motueka's Facebook page, providing links to this site for a wider group of local computer users. That's my theory, anyway.

Other reasons include an increase in the number of contributed articles and photos by people such as Tania Fowler, Shirley Frater, Coralie Smith, Sophie Harrison and some High School students. The political issues around the performance of the community board and the proposed council amalgamation are also providing fruitful discussions on this ideal community forum.

One worrying trend, however, has been the drop-off in sponsorship for the site. While viewer numbers are increasing, the few supportive businesses have been tailing off. I'm confident that this website is providing a valuable community asset, but it cannot run forever on the smell of an oily rag so the appeal goes out to local community-minded businesses to help with some small sponsorship.

June statistics
The general areas most viewed in June were:

Home page - 1995
Community board - 481
News - 458 *
Youth forum - 347
Discussion forum - 286
Events calendar - 271
Photo gallery - 227
Recreation Centre - 214
About Motueka - 182
Sports - 178 *

Search the site - 156
Noticeboard - 155
Community groups - 152 *
Our history - 150
Our people - 146
Blogsites & Facebook pages - 143
Churches - 143 *
Video gallery - 140
Community events - 132
Clubs/arts - 125 *

Police - 122
Sunday market - 120
Family Service Centre - 114
Our sponsors - 109
Youth Council - 108
Community House - 103
Movie listings - 103
Our Town Motueka - 101
Schools - 100 *

[* Areas marked by an asterisk had many more visits directly to groups within them (such as individual churches or sports clubs) which are not counted in these figure - ask if you want to know the specific page figures.]

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