Some 2018 Traffic Stats

A few of have asked in the past on how traffic to the site generally looks. Here is a breakdown:

:abacus: 3 million visitors/month
:desktop_computer: 91% view on desktop
:t_rex: 72% use Chrome
:us: 44% of the traffic is from the US
:sunglasses: 0 ads, nag screens, and trackers

Below is a chart of where the traffic goes:

Flash is something people still search for and spend time on. The low forums traffic is something that does bother me, but that is something to focus on more strongly for the next year. While React only gets 22% of the traffic, it is the one that seems to always get the most attention and buzz…and questions :slight_smile:

Let me know if you all have any questions. This might be the last year where we have data on things like browser stats, for I removed Google Analytics a few weeks ago in favor of deferring all of that to Cloudflare.

Cheers,
Kirupa

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It’s impressive that TheCanadian, tbo, senocular, you, me, Millad, and REB_412 browsing the forums is 1.8% of the traffic to the whole site!

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You are right. That does seem a little too low, for the number of lurkers and people who land here from Google to copy/paste should be higher (given that there are several million posts here).

Way to buck the mobile trend, but even more so the ads, nag screens, and trackers !

Hmmm … what are people still doing with Flash? :flushed:

Mobile doesn’t make sense for a site like this since people probably use the content alongside a code editor or some other non-mobile friendly app. Having desktop be 100% of the traffic would be ideal haha🔥

For the Flash content, it is all over the place. There isn’t any handful of content that gets the bulk of the traffic.

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Yeah I figured, but why aren’t more of those people still mobile searching Kirupa on the subway, tram, train, etc., rides home? Must be playing games at that point. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Three million visitors a month? That’s awesome!

Have you ever had ads? I honestly don’t recall so they must have never been intrusive if so. In that sense THANK YOU, its a bit of a mess out there now days - between ads, nagging pop-overs, take-overs, consents, etc.

Have you seen the 2019 CSS-Tricks redesign? They seem to have more ads intermingled throughout now. I honestly still haven’t got used to viewing the home page and its content flow. In some ways it reminds me of the Smashing Magazines redesign above the fold, but at least they have a toggle for removing the red. What are your thoughts on the CSS-Tricks redesign overall?

Assumedly pretty happy, considering. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Haha. The site used to have ads on top of ads. It wasn’t terrible, for the ads had to be custom designed for the site and be non-animated images. We had some pretty nice looking pixelart themed ads for many years. With that said, it did get a little ridiculous towards the 2009-2012 timeframe with the large quantity of ads that you had to deal with.

Fortunately (or unfortunately) the ad revenue started drying up because monetizing in the post-flash era was difficult and the site’s traffic started going down. The biggest advertisers were component vendors, but in a web-world, everything is free or View Source-able. It was also difficult to enforce licenses and things of that sort for web content. The traditional Flash advertisers simply had no business any more. Around 2013, I removed ads in favor of promoting my books instead. While ads were easy money, this is far more satisfying.

I am not going to say the site will never have ads. If the right advertiser with the right product has an interesting proposal, hearing them out makes sense. Whatever the outcome, I will be picky on ensuring ads don’t interfere with the site’s content :pizza:

Regarding the css-tricks redesign, I think it looks good. I have adblock on, so maybe I am not seeing the ads that you mention. Can you post a screenshot?

Thanks,
Kirupa

I guess the Flash glory years have now evaded my memory. But after a quick look, it all came flooding back - long live pixelart. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

^ Click to view screenshot.

It does look good with that K-ville reference. :wink:

To me, there is just something about the flow, readability, or something. I find my eyes moving all over the place to sort and gather what is being presented which is not really optimal regarding content consumption, at least regarding the landing page (IMHO).

As for ad blockers etc., I view the web wide open in all its sometimes annoying glory.