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One of the many themes we learned during our trip to Los Angeles for the NFL Digital Summit is that numbers tell the story. Understanding and properly evaluating website metrics can be a valuable tool in getting the most out of your platform.
Coming from baseball background, stats have always intrigued me. When my playing days came to an end, I went from studying batting averages and on-base percentages to calculating time on site and unique visitors. So for me, the idea of taking a 'deep dive' into analytics wasn't new. That said, I still learned that the amount of data available in the online world only continues to grow. Numbers beget more numbers, starting a chain reaction that can leave you searching through result fields for hours.
With that in mind, I wanted to share a few numbers that might surprise the average Texans fan. This data comes via the Adobe Marketing cloud, which is what we use to measure website traffic, from the 2014 year.
69.1%: That is the amount of HT.com website traffic that comes from the state of Texas. That total is more than the rest of the top 10 states combined. You know what they say, everything is bigger in Texas, including our web traffic. What state is number two? California.
#2: The second most popular country in terms of HT.com web traffic is...Canada. While this no doubt has to do with the huge following my wife and her family (they are from Canada) have created, this kind of surprised me. The country I expected, Mexico, was fourth. That said the numbers are small in comparison to our United States support. You could add countries two through 100 and not get near the US's total page views.
Watt/Clowney: The dynamic duo should be stellar on the field, but they are already proving to quite the tandem in the digital world. A draft story on J.J. reaching out to Jadeveon is now the most read story of the year on HoustonTexans.com. Also, a recent NFL Network video of Watt talking about his new teammate was the highest watched video in the past week.
Atlanta, GA: We've already talked about the strength of Texas in our metrics, so I thought it would be fun to mention the first non-Texas city to appear in our traffic rankings. That would be the 'ATL', which narrowly edged Moses Lake, Washington (really).
15%: The amount of our traffic that comes from social media websites (mainly Facebook and Twitter). We all know the power of social media, and in terms of websites it is becoming the most powerful tool you can have to get your content out. For comparison's sake, this number was 6 percent over the same time span a year ago. I guarantee you this number is only going to rise.
