Whites Writing Whiteness Google Analytics Data Report: 1 January – 30 June 2019

This report contains provisional information about WWW website use for the particular time-period covered. It has been compiled from Google Analytics data, and will be subject to in-depth comparative analysis at a later stage.

Changes from the Last Report
In comparing user and traffic data from the Whites Writing Whiteness website with the previously reported period (1 July 2018 – 31 December 2018), several pleasing developments are apparent. Firstly, the number of visits per user has risen 12.76% (from 1.54 to 1.74 respectively). Secondly, the number of pages users view in an average session has risen 7.6% (from 2.2 to 2.4 pages) — with these users based in 59 countries and 279 cities around the world (versus 204 cities in 51 countries for the previous period). Thirdly, the average time visitors spend viewing pages has risen by 13.3% (from 2:07 to 2:24 mins respectively). The fact that website use continues to rise is very pleasing indeed, and analysis of the details of usage indicates that this is a result of the regular posting of research-rich material and the research tools to analyse this.

The Six Month Report
The WWW website was visited by 550 unique users between 1 January 2019 and 30 June 2019. The site was accessed 958 times, from 59 countries, with the top ten countries in terms of number of users being the UK, the USA, South Africa, Germany, France, Canada, Australia, Spain, Ireland and the Netherlands respectively, and with A strong pattern of  visits from other countries including the Italy, Denmark, India, Zimbabwe, Brazil, Zambia, South Korea, Mexico, Norway and Pakistan.

The site continues to have users who repeatedly visit the site and many who spend much longer than average looking at its pages. Particularly prolific repeat users access the site from South Africa, the UK, the USA, and South Africa, including some habitual users from London, New York, Sandton, Cape Town, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Pretoria and Lancaster. For more detailed information, please see Table 6.

Users view many pages per visit, with an average of 2 (2.37) pages viewed each visit. Overall, there have been 2,271 page views in total. There have been 91 habitual users, spending detailed time on an average of 3 (3.09) pages per visit, while the 542 new users view an average of 2 (1.82) pages.

Regarding how frequently users return to the site, there have been 2 visits to the site by 85 users, between 25 and 50 visits to the site by 43 users, between 101 and 200 visits to the site by 53 users, and more than 200 visits to the site by 26 users. These data indicate a serious research use by some 200+ in-depth users, with the corresponding most-used pages being those concerned with verbatim transcribed letters and documents, and containing detailed analytical discussion. It is very pleasing that users are responding so positively to the most research-rich aspects of the website pages.

Concerning length of users’ sessions, 64 users have spent between 3 and 10 minutes browsing the website, 45 users have spent between 10.1-30 minutes, and 18 users spent more than 31 minutes. The average number of users visiting the site per month is usually over 160 and sometimes over 200.

Breakdown of Site Usage by Month: 1 January 2019 – 30 June 2019
	Users	Pageviews	Avg. visit duration (mins)	Freq. visitor countries
January	93	241	1:32	15
February	77	294	1:35	21
March	138	609	2:51	26
April	106	480	3:54	29
May	95	367	1:55	21
June	72	280	1:58	22

The most-accessed page after the homepage is the project ‘Blog’. The project blog contains largely theoretical discussions in addition to project updates, and many users continue to follow these discussions. There are a number of facilities which have been designed to support research use, and it is very pleasing that these are as effective as they are. For instance, the ‘Traces’ area of the website, which provides in-depth analyses of particular documents, continues to be widely read and used by readers. Additionally, the ‘Thinking with Elias’ area (launched in the spring of 2016) and the ‘Collections’ (providing detailed information about collections worked with) areas continue to be highly popular destinations for website visitors.

In addition to tracking use of the WWW pages via Google Analytics, email contacts and traffic arising from more one-off enquiries are also logged. In this current period, over 30 such enquiries have been fielded. As for previous analytics reports, these are a combination of family history enquiries, requests for expert advice or opinion, and the provision of information about secondary analysis/use. Notable email correspondence over this period has occurred in particular regarding the role of Olive Schreiner in relation to white liberalism and its links with black radicalism in the period from the 1890s to 1913, and concerning the complexities of how racial categorisation developed and played out over time in South Africa.

User Traffic
The majority of users (40.6%) visit the website by direct link. Many users (32.4%) also find the website via referrals from other websites, or through organic searches (26.7%) via Google and other search engines.

Where users access the site from, and how often:
Tables 1 through 5 below present geographical images show the frequency of website usage for this reported period. These indicate number of visits to the website by saturation of blue ranging from light blue (fewer sessions) to dark blue (the most sessions), and the range in the bottom left corner indicates the lower and upper bound of sessions for this period according to continent (Table 1), sub-continent (Table 2), and sub-regions (Tables 3-5).

 

Table 1. Number of Visits by Continent
Above, the range spans from 19 sessions (Oceania) to 670 sessions (Europe), and indicates via darkening shades of blue that the most users accessed the website from Europe for this reported period.

The data above demonstrate that the majority of Whites Writing Whiteness website users access the website from Europe (56.8%), the Americas (19.4%), and Africa (15.9%), and that users from Europe and the Oceania tend to spend the most time on the website. 

 

Table 2. Number of Visits by Sub-Continent Region

Above, the range spans from 1 session (Caribbean) to 575 sessions (Northern Europe), and indicates via darkening shades of blue that the most users accessed the website from Northern Europe for this reported period.

The data above demonstrate that the majority of Whites Writing Whiteness website users access the website from Northern Europe (44.6%), Northern America (17.6%) and Southern Africa (13%), and that users from South America (15:54 mins, not pictured) and Northern Europe (3:16 mins) tend to spend the most time on the website.

 

Table 3. Number of Users by Sub-Region – South Africa

Above, the range spans from 1 session (the North Cape) to 57 sessions (Gauteng), and indicates via darkening shades of blue that the most users accessed the website from the Gauteng for this reported period.

The data above demonstrate that the majority of Whites Writing Whiteness website users access the website from Gauteng (58.9%), the Western Cape (21.9%), and the KwaZulu-Natal (8.2%) regions, and that users from the North West and Gauteng regions tend to spend the most time on the website.

 

Table 4. Number of Users by Sub-Region – United States

Above, the range spans from 1 session (Wisconsin) to 38 sessions (Connecticut), and indicates via darkening shades of blue that the most users accessed the website from Connecticut for this reported period.

The data above demonstrate that the majority of Whites Writing Whiteness website users access the website from the states of New York (45.3%), California (8.2%), and Texas (7.1%), and users from California and Texas tend to spend the most time on the website.

 

Table 5. Number of Views by Sub-Region – UK

Above, the range spans from 2 sessions (not set) to 1,026 sessions (England), and indicates via darkening shades of blue that the most users accessed the website from England for this reported period.

The data above demonstrate that the majority of Whites Writing Whiteness website users access the website from England (79.9%), Scotland (13.4%) and Wales (5.4%), and that users from Northern Ireland and Wales tend to spend the most time on the website.

 

Table 6: Cities, Number of Visits and Pages Accessed
The data below show, by city, the number of visits, number of pages accessed on average and the average duration spent on the site, respectively. N.B. asterisks denote particularly intense site usage and/or high numbers of visits.
Country	City	Visits	Pages accessed	Avg. visit duration  (mins)
UK (10 of 96)	London	75*	2.60*	01:05
	Edinburgh	84*	4.30*	05:15*
	(not set)	23*	1.70*	00:58
	Birmingham	11	1.00	00:00
	Lancaster	128*	3.31*	04:21*
	Glasgow	16	1.69*	02:05
	Leeds	5	1.00	00:00
	Cardiff	5	1.20	00:49
	Brighton	6	1.00	00:00
	Cambridge	4	1.25	00:42
USA (10 of 46)	New York	34*	1.29	00:35
	(not set)	3	1.67	02:18*
	San Diego	3	2.33*	09:52*
	Washington	2	1.00	00:00
	Knoxville	2	1.00	00:00
	Austin	2	1.00	00:00
	Gilbert	1	1.00	00:00
	Claremont	1	3.00*	01:49
	Los Angeles	1	1.00	00:00
	Mission Viejo	1	1.00	00:00
Australia (3 of 3)	Melbourne	3	5.33*	10:16*
	Sydney	11*	1.09	00:09
	(not set)	2	2.50*	03:31*
South Africa (10 of 34)	Cape Town	19*	1.89	00:53
	Sandton	21*	2.62*	01:42
	Pretoria	14*	2.57*	02:17*
	Johannesburg	7	1.14	00:01
	Durban	5	1.00	00:00
	Johannesburg South	6	1.17	01:28
	Centurion	3	1.00	00:00
	Bloemfontein	2	4.50*	02:08*
	Roodepoort	2	1.50	02:07*
	(not set)	1	1.00	00:00

 

Last updated: 8 November 2019

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