2014 Year-End Numbers and Open Thread

[ladysisyphus]

We've done it before and we're doing it again! We've got a lot of data generated on readership and page views, but they're mostly only visible from the back end, so we've collected some screencaps and some numbers crunched for those of you who wonder, hey, just how many people are reading this thing

Comments

[ladysisyphus]

Thank you for sharing your user experience with us! ...That sounds so disgustingly corporate, but honestly, we know there must be a bunch of different ways people go about devouring each issue, but we don't hear about most of them. So perspective is nice!

I'm sure you're right here, that the two-day lead time stories get on LJ over our website means there's a lot more traffic for those stories on LJ (makes sense, considering the stories aren't even on the website yet during those two days to get traffic!). What's interesting to me, though, is that after that Wednesday, when everything's up in both places and everything links to everywhere else, new stories continue to get more hits on LJ than on the website. I don't have numbers in front of me, only memory, but even well into November, after all the links were updated and we'd announced both sites everywhere, people were still reading our October issue primarily on LJ.

To be clear, too: In no way is this sort of division bad! I was mostly referencing what I see as one of the results of the two-site setup to explain why the LJ readership numbers are down this year. In fact, that split makes a lot of sense for me, since LJ is where everyone expects new issues (and old, old favorites) to be, but since the back catalogue is kind of a pain in the butt to navigate, if I were looking for a story from anything but the most current issue, I know I'd hit the website first.

You can ignore this question if you want, but since you're one of the first readers to mention it to me, I'd like to press a bit: What is it about a story's wiki page that makes you decide whether or not you read the story? Or is that determination made at a different part of the process you described? I'd like to give creators points on what to put on their stories' wiki pages to entice potential readers.

Your LJ friends feed is still a good way to get issues, but you can also add your email address to our newsletter list so that you get reminders in your inbox about new issues. We also post issue announcements and links to individual stories/artwork on Twitter and Tumblr (and I think it gets automatically mirrored to our Facebook?), and there's always a more general announcement post on our Goodreads group. I don't know if any of those places are more likely to be seen by you, but if they are, we're glad to be of use! And if they're not, and you have a social media place you more regularly frequent, let us know and we'll see what we can do about being there.

[ladysisyphus]

Oh, that kind of 'Save For Later' thing is an interesting idea, definitely one we've never thought about before. I know it's not possible to do anything to modify LJ's existing structure, and I'd think that adding stories to your LJ memories is sort of assigning them greater permanent status than just 'oh yeah, remind me to look at that later'. But maybe there's a Wordpress plugin that would allow for bookmarking like that, hmm...

We do also have an RSS feed for this journal, which you can find at http://bb-shousetsu.livejournal.com/data/rss -- though I know that would just let you bookmark the issues themselves, and not particular stories. I'm assuming http://s2b2.livejournal.com/data/rss would get you the same for the entries made to the stories journal itself.

Don't mind me, I'm sort of thinking out loud here. This is definitely something worth looking into, though, so thank you so much for bringing it up!

[ladysisyphus]

There are user accounts on our website -- you can see your options for setting one up here, and it doesn't take having a Wordpress account. But plugins seem more geared toward site owners than to individual users. Still, definitely worth keeping an eye out for, even if it's just a simple save-for-later thing. All good thoughts to ponder! Thanks again!