Has anyone noticed the general decrease of average clicks (not your own but the general average) on DPW over the past several months? You can see this on your art tracking page.
Is this due to an increased number of artists creating a larger number of paintings to view on the “What’s New” page or is it due to a decrease in overall traffic to the site?
Is this just seasonal and it will pick up again?
Just want to get a feeling of everyone’s thoughts on this.
Thanks if you take the time to reply. I know everyone is busy painting away.
I never noticed it til you pointed it out. I checked what the average was about the same time last year and it was around 250-260. Now it’s dropped to around 60.
I noticed this also…Then again I have not been posting every day for the last 8 weeks or so, but I have no clicks at all …probably partially to not posting but still strange to have zero…
I agree the graphs do seem to be in a downward movement. I think part of the reason is simply the times we are living in. Right now, there is a lot of turmoil in Europe, for example;.and people are distracted by far more serious issues. I don’t know how much DPW traffic comes from European countries, but it’s inevitable that the current political issues may draw folk away from the nicer things in life, such as viewing and buying art. There are also things in the UK, for example, like Internet Service Provider filters in operation, seeking to block access to “dodgy” sites. Innocent websites can sometimes get filtered out. The Internet is a complex animal.
The following is copied from ‘traffic statistics help’, it’s referring to individual traffic stats, but the same would be true for the dpw average traffic.
"Charted by Painting not by Day
Usually traffic statistics are presented as clicks per day. In DPW, your traffic is presented by painting and not by the day the clicks occurred. This can be confusing because there are dates on the horizontal axis, however these are simply the dates your paintings were published and not when the clicks occurred.
So, if you published a painting on July 3rd, then all of the clicks on that painting would be charted on July 3rd regardless of when the clicks occurred. While this approach doesn’t show your overall trend in traffic over time, it does show you the relative popularity of your paintings.
It also means that the lines in the chart will tend to slope downward to the right since the older paintings to the left have had more time to attract traffic. This does not mean that your traffic is necessarily decreasing over time."
Nora…then I’m confused…when I go to my traffic page and click on the painting I get a small synopsis under the painting That shows the statistics of that painting versus the average broken down by clicks…Facebook…buy…etc.
I’ve always used it as a gauge of how my painting is doing versus the average number for dpw that day. Sometimes the average is lower…sometimes higher.
Guess only half my brain is working because I don’t understand yet.
Sorry! Didn’t mean to confuse you! You’re reading your synopsis correctly. I was referring to the question of a downward trend in overall views.
I should have pinpointed the last paragraph of my previous post: “It also means that the lines in the chart will tend to slope downward to the right since the older paintings to the left have had more time to attract traffic. This does not mean that your traffic is necessarily decreasing over time.”
So, the number of views on today’s paintings compared to the ones posted a year ago will probably always be (much) less, because the older ones have had 364 more days to accumulate views. That’s why there appears to be a ‘downward trend’, but traffic is not necessarily decreasing.
Hope I didn’t add to your confusion with my attempt at being helpful!
I’ve not posted for a few months for many reasons (trying some new things, holidays, etc.)–but was very pleased with my 2015 traffic and sales.
With the popular 30-in-30 January challenge, the number of paintings seems to have greatly increased so perhaps that is partly responsible for lower clicks?
I’d like to know what DPW is doing to promote the site and gain new subscribers to the daily e-mail.
And is there any way to see the daily open rates–do more subscribers open the e-mail on a weekend or weekday, for example?
Think it is a factor of 2 things, one the time of year, generally January is a slow moth for sales of any type. Second it is the month of the 30 paintings in 30 days that a lot of artist participate in, (think about a thousand painter world wide are doing it) and a number of them are on DPWs. More work than usual is getting generated. Things should get back to normal after this month.
I, too, noticed that the average pop-up views were trending downward, but since I just joined in December, I assumed that it was because more people are shopping online in December.
Linda Carney’s comment is interesting that last January’s average pop-up views were around 250 while this January’s is around 60.
There used to be a button on DPW called “Our Traffic” which gave the number of unique visitors for the previous day. It usually was around 11,000. At some point they got rid of it. I don’t know why. I would be interested to know if that number is down.
It has been slow for many months now, though just recently there does seem to be a bit more activity, but the viewers are fewer and seem more timid and cautious about making an actual purchase. Many artists, few buyers, nothing new in that really and not just here at DPW, but in general.
As Nora explained perfectly, the traffic to DPW has not decreased since last year. It only appears so if you read the charts of clicks on your traffic page as by date,* instead of by work of art*. The older paintings, as Nora said, have had more time to accumulate clicks and therefore show more traffic. Another result of the clicks being tracked by work, instead of by time, is the lines in the charts slope downward to the right, which again misleadingly seems to indicate decreasing traffic.
The average traffic in the charts is the average number of clicks for paintings posted on a given day.
I did have a traffic total available on DPW. Unfortunately, tracking and displaying the information, as I did, was causing load and performance issues on the web servers so I removed it.
If you want more clicks, post a painting in the weekly challenges, the monthly contest or an auction. You can compare these clicks to paintings you don’t promote, and clearly see the difference.
Thanks David for your response! It’s nice to have the traffic stats feature and helpful to see which of my paintings have more activity. Thanks for all you do.
David. Cannot imagine how you manage this …incredible job that you do…just love being a part of this lovely community …and appreciate how personable everything seems to be. You and Carol are wonderful.
You’re reading your synopsis correctly. I was referring to the question of a downward trend in overall views.