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The biggest day of the week for local content
By Justin Carder | January 31, 2008
In my first post introducing our MyZip sites, I showed you a few examples of what our contributor blogs look like and what kinds of original, local content you can find on our pioneer sites from Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood 98112.net to 02360.net in Plymouth, Mass.
Check out the MyZip site in your area to see if we have a blogger in your neighborhood — just type your ZIP code in your address bar and add .net.
Now that our MyZip.net trial is running full steam ahead, we’re learning more and more about how a network of local content grows and the forces and behaviors that shape it. Some of the lessons are simple. For example, on which day of the week does our network get the most traffic?
Above, you can see the average pageview totals for each day of the week. Readers on the MyZip network consume more pageviews on Wednesdays than any other day of the week, while on Friday and the weekend consumption drops significantly.
That’s all pretty straightforward. Wednesday is a small suprise as Tuesday is typically thought of us the biggest day of the week for content consumption in general media and news content environments. Meanwhile, the weekend dropoff is also a typical pattern — people just don’t consume as many pages when they aren’t surfing at work. Call it conservation of bandwidth.
More surprising is what we’ve seen so far regarding the average amount of time a visitor spends on one of our MyZip sites. Sunday, when it comes to our local content, lives up to its traditional billing as a day of rest when people have more time to enjoy the content that they are experiencing. What’s happening on Thursdays? One can only assume that Thursday is the perfect intersection of personally relavent content and time in the work-day to enjoy it. Friday, from our network’s perspective anyway, is a rush as people try to get their desktops cleared for the weekend.
We’re also learning a great deal about how our MyZip contributors work. Below is a chart of average number of posts on the network by day of week. You’ll see that the pattern is similiar to the pattern of pageview traffic on the network with the days of highest post volume on the network falling midweek.
We’re just started to get wrapped around the interplay of measurements like these in understanding how the MyZip network lives and breathes. What would happen if we encouraged the MyZip contributors to shift their creation of new posts and pictures to more closely align with the time on site pattern? Can we shift the average time people spend on a MyZip site on a Friday or are we up against factors bigger than the Internet?
We hope to be able to answer questions like these eventually. In the meantime, we are measuring and learning. The MyZip team is also working hard to add new sites to the network in neighborhoods across the country. Want to have a voice in your neighborhood? Have something to say about the businesses and streets in your area? Interested in giving us some more fun datapoints to chart? Your neighborhood needs a MyZip blogger, too.
Topics: Blogging |