At first, I was skeptical that something was off with the system. There was no way, I thought, we're getting this many additional page views out of seemingly nowhere.
And then, this past 24 hours, I spent a little time digging.
Longtime readers know we've forever had a goal of averaging 100,000 page views per day. Being a media company that doesn't give away our best work for free, that was always going to be a challenge, but we saw it as reasonable, since we'd often been in that range, and the only time we ever abandoned it was during the peak of the pandemic shutdown, when we were lucky to hit 50,000 in a day.
Well, first, sports came back. So that was nice.
Next, this new app came along. And that, very clearly now, was almost as nice.
Check this out: In October of 2019, we averaged 92,132 views, which was very good at the time. In this ongoing October, we're averaging 143,528. That's an increase of, uh, 55 percent. And that's despite the Penguins having been active in this month a year ago, dormant now.
Crazy, right?
I decided first to wait a while, while offering you a weekly disclaimer here in Site Stuff about my skepticism on this front. Maybe something wasn't counting right. Maybe it'd soon settle down. Whatever.
When it didn't, based on a theory Dali had, we ripped through some numbers late last night and came up with this two-fold explanation:
1. You're (finally) using the team pages.
2. You're moving around more quickly.
No number has leaped out at us quite like the increased usage in our Steelers, Penguins and Pirates team pages. And I'm proud to say that was by design. We'd urged the developers to make the team-button icons on the app more visible, and they really came through on that front. And we'd urged everyone involved to put more TLC into the team pages themselves, to make them more worthy of a visit.
The result: Team pages now account for 7.04% of all our page views, compared to 4.69% in October 2019. That's almost a doubling.
And because of that, I'd imagine, more readers took more time to read more pieces about their favorite teams, which extrapolated the effect.
The other one took a little more work.
Readers are now opening 5.91 pages per session, compared to 2.39 in October 2019. That's more than a doubling.
This one's obviously harder to explain. Much as I'd like to think our content is twice as compelling as it was a year ago, that doesn't square with the fact that the average session increased by a mere four seconds in that same span. So Dali suggested that maybe, because this app is faster, readers are able to try out more content without having to wait and wait and wait for a page to materialize.
Voila: The average download time of a page on our app/site, according to Google Analytics, is 5.12 seconds, compared to 20.15 seconds in 2019. (Yeah, I know.) But here, too, logic dictates that, if you're waiting that long, you'll lose patience and find something else to do.
We're expecting our download times will go down much further, actually, once other priorities are addressed, but this still underscores how much of a difference improved tech can make on this business.
ABOUT THE DKPS+ MARKER
If you see the new DKPS+ marker on content, and you're already a subscriber, you're good to go. There aren't multiple levels of being a subscriber here. You're either a subscriber or you aren't. If you are, you get absolutely everything.
I mean, we aren't monsters!
So, if you have trouble logging in for whatever reason, it's only because you're having a login issue. In which case, just email us: Help@DKPittsburghSports.com
ACCOUNT ACCESS THIS WEEK
You will have access to your subscription accounts within the coming week. Progress was made on the subscription front in the past week, and we're expecting to have testing and all else done well before the next Site Stuff you read.
This hasn't been simple. As I've told readers many times over the years, our subscriber database is a mess of epic proportions, the result of multiple moves to platforms of greatly varying quality. It was always going to be the hardest step of this migration, too.
PENN STATE? DUQUESNE?
As part of resuming full coverage of Penn State football and Duquesne basketball in 2020, we're making the full commitment. That means travel and everything.
But we'll need help on these, and I won't hide that. Eventually, that'll involve our subscribers coming through, primarily through reading and sharing but also, very soon, buying gift subscriptions we'll attach to each school. From there, it'll involve getting support from a sponsor for each one.
Who'll step up for Penn State?
Who'll step up for Duquesne?
Here's hoping that's your business. If it is, we've updated our Media Kit, but you also can just reach out directly to She Who Is Boss: Dali@DKPittsburghSports.com
MILITARY BREAKTHROUGH
I mentioned in this space a couple weeks ago that our Moon Golf Club Military Drive to 1,500 had hit a rare wall ... and that sure didn't take long to change. Since then, we've had two bulk purchases of 10 each -- including one just yesterday from Tim! -- two purchases of five each, and one of 75, with commitments for more once we get closer to Veterans Day.
The Drive is at 1,190 for the year, and we're back on a safe enough pace to meet the annual goal of 1,500.
If you'd like to contribute to veterans seeking a free annual subscription -- we take care of all active-duty ourselves -- those are $19.99 per veteran, or half-price. The only way to get those -- for now, anyway -- is to email me directly at DK@DKPittsburghSports.com
BACK TO BUSINESS
• Our daily page views, averaged out over the past week, were 139,846, down 3.1% from the previous week. Our most-read original article was my Grind on Minkah Fitzpatrick from Heinz Field, at 60,727. Broken down by team, we had 331,822 for Steelers, 131,022 views for Penguins, 59,560 for Pirates, 13,714 for Pitt, 4,266 for Duquesne, 2,887 for Penn State.
• Our podcast downloads for DK Sports Radio original content were 48,762, down 2% from the previous week.
• We're at 37,550 (+76) followers on Twitter, we're at 36,806 (+24) followers on Facebook, we're at 14,750 (-13) followers on Instagram. These figures are just for our official company account on each platform, not for us as individuals.
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