Tuesday, April 09, 2013

Google Analytics

What is Google Analytics?  It is a service offered by Google that collects data about visitors to a web site.  Now, don't worry!  It doesn't collect any personal information about you.  It merely tells a web site owner things like how many people visit the web site, how they found the site, what country and city they are in, how many pages they view, how long they stay on the web site, and what operating system and  browser they use.  It is a tool that can be very helpful to a web site owner in tailoring the content of the site to better suit the needs of those who use it.  In the case of Sermons4Kids, it is also a good indicator of how well we are doing in spreading the Gospel.  In this post, I will share some interesting facts about traffic on the Sermons4Kids web site for the first quarter of this year.

The first thing that catches your eye when you view the Google statistics is that there were 975,045 visits to the web site in the first quarter of 2013.  Of that total, 489,248 were unique visitors and they viewed a total of 2,759,006 pages.  These visitors came from 208 different countries and territories.  Here is a list of the top ten.
  •     United States (698,974)
  •     United Kingdom (87,529)
  •     Canada (40,422)
  •     Australia (26,527)
  •     Mexico (12,739)
  •     Philippines (7,834)
  •     South Africa (5,831)
  •     Colombia (5,483)
  •     New Zealand (5,144)
  •     Puerto Rico (4,437) 
When you look at a graph depicting our daily web site traffic, every week looks almost identical.  The highest traffic day, by far, is Saturday.  The second busiest day of the week is Wednesday.
   
One thing that surprised me was that we had 131,573 visitors to the web site during the first quarter who were using a mobile device.  As you might expect, the iPad was the leader of the pack followed by the iPhone.  Other devices included the Samsung Galaxy S3, Google Nexus, and the Motorola Droid Razr.  Perhaps we need to investigate the possibility of developing a Sermons4Kids App.

When I launched the Sermons4Kids web site, I never imagined that it would reach "the uttermost parts of the earth."  There is a great temptation to look at all the Google Analytic statistics and say, "Wow, we are doing a great job." But the true measure of our success is not what Google says, the true measure of our success is what God says.  Hopefully, one day we will hear him say, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant."