One of the greatest areas of ambiguity when interpreting the data resulted from some companies’ lack of metrics-gathering tools, such as Google Analytics or other built-in metrics systems, during their launch year. Also, certain participants either did not choose to provide or did not have access to certain data points within the questionnaire, making the data difficult to measure as a whole. An even greater problem lay with our researchers’ inability to contextualize the information present in the data sets according to the companies’ year of launch and the thematic issues its site covers. However, revealing the information would make it too easy to identify each participant. Out of consideration for their privacy, the study was not designed to reveal financial and technical data about the companies participating. Yet, from the data that is public, one can glean a lot of important lessons from our participants about company behavioral patterns, traffic patterns, funding and expenditures that are useful in identifying best practices and areas for improvement among single-subject websites across the board. Below are the key findings from each level of analysis, including: funding, budget expenditures and traffic data. Site Traffic In developing the measurements for this section, the research team ran up against two areas of issue: first, the lack of analytics tools used in participants’ launch years, and, second, displaying information based upon site traffic numbers.
Since, across the board, most participants failed to collect site analytics in their reported launch year, the research team has just listed 2013 traffic numbers, rather than both launch year and 2013, so as not to skew data based on varying start dates and months of each organization. To develop the parameters for Chart A.1, the researchers took the net average of each website’s traffic in terms of hits per month and then divided each category into two tiers based on the range of numbers reported. Because the top tier’s range was significantly larger than the most common tier, the team chose not to include those outliers.
Looking at the data collectively, steady daily traffic appears as driven by an average of 37 percent user return rate (individual responses not displayed). Spikes in traffic are influenced by events most likely related to the release of a particular article or an increase in attention paid to the niche subject in popular culture, business, political events or mainstream media. Dips in traffic, while harder to explain, are influenced by a drop in interest or knowledge of the niche topic, consistent with varying attention spans for specific topics in mainstream media and the general media-consuming population. In analyzing the data within the most common tier, it’s clear that the majority of sites’ traffic lies in the 0-90,000 hits-per-month range. Considering the niche specialty of the topic areas from our participant pool, this expectant range of site traffic can be applied to project traffic to other single-subject website. This data is important for advertising and subscription opportunities, which are limited by an audience size of 0-90,000 for specialized topics, excluding outlier responses. With this expected visitor base, outside funding must be considered to adequately cover organizational expenses.