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Interest.co.nz reaches a record 1 million page impressions in March
March 31st, 2009
By Bernard Hickey
We’ve knocked the bastard off with almost a day to spare.
Earlier today www.interest.co.nz passed the milestone for 1 million page impressions in a month for the first time.
Needless to say we had a quiet celebration involving coffee and cakes at our favorite local cafe Dellows in Herne Bay. All of us here at interest.co.nz, including myself, Publisher David Chaston, video whiz Bryan Spondre, journalist Alex Tarrant and data analyst Suhaimi Mohamad, would like to thank our readers, commenters, sponsors and advertisers for lifting us up to this milestone.
We love a good chart and data series so I thought it would be useful charting and explaining the traffic to our site and what has happened over the last year as we beefed up our rates tables, added news, included commentary, encouraged comments and introduced new charts. Besides, it’s fun to tell a good news story for once, particularly because it’s about us!
The red line in the chart to the left shows our growth in page impressions (PIs) from around 200,000 a month a year ago to just over 1 million page impressions this month. Each time a reader clicks through to a new page counts as a page impression, according to the people who do our stats, Nielsen Online.
The grey line in the chart shows the number of unique browsers per month. That measures the number of individual readers who came to our site in the month. Each reader who has their cookies turned on will be counted as one unique browser each month, regardless of the number of times each reader visited.
Our number of unique browsers per month rose over 100,000 for the first time in March to 120,000 and is up from around 36,000 a month a year ago.
The blue line is the number of unique browser sessions, which measures the number of times readers came to our site cumulatively over the month. This line shows is how many times readers visited our site in each month. That has risen from around 70,000 a month a year ago to around 360,000 now.
Essentially, the number of people coming to our site has almost quadrupled in the last year and our number of page impressions has quintupled. The frequency of visits for each reader each month has risen from around 2 times eachmonth a year ago to around 3 times each month now, which means our readers are now visiting the site 50% more each month than they were a year ago.
A year ago each unique browser (reader) looked at around 6 pages per month. In March they looked at around 8 pages per month.
Other numbers from Nielsen On-line show that the time readers spend on the site has been stable at around 1 minute 18 seconds per page and 3 minutes 30 seconds per session, which is the highest for any news and information site in New Zealand, according to Nielsen OnLine.
So what?
This means we’re the most heavily used specialist financial news and information website in New Zealand, well ahead of the nbr.co.nz on around 800,000 page impressions this month, although nbr.co.nz does have more unique browsers than us with around 150,000 this month. Something for us to work on and we suspect it’s not a zero sum game. We have more page impressions than nbr.co.nz each month because our readers visit more often and look at more pages each time they come.
The business sections of NZHerald and Stuff continue to have significantly more users and traffic than both of us. Again, more work for us to do.
We’re also the biggest web-only news and information site in New Zealand that we can think of that is measured by Nielsen. NZHerald and Stuff both depend on news generated by big newspaper groups, as does the nbr.co.nz.
We love being popular because it’s nice to know we’re being useful. Secondly, it’s useful for our advertisers and sponsors, who help support the the site.
We’re all about providing the most useful and independent news, information and commentary about interest rates, banks, finance companies and the economy in New Zealand. We want to help the 2 million New Zealanders who have to make decisions about their mortgages and savings every 6 to 18 months. But mainly, we want to have fun talking and thinking about interest rates and the like. We’re a bit strange like that.
Thanks again. We’re having a ball.
Tags: Alex Tarrant, Bernard Hickey, Bryan Spondre, David Chaston, interest.co.nz, Suhaimi Mohamad
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March 31st, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Good on you Bernard. Do they give you anything to hang on the wall to mark your achievement?
March 31st, 2009 at 2:50 pm
Congratulations! I read this everyday. The only intelligent NZ news site.
March 31st, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Congratulations for you Bernhard and your team for another success story, which is also reflected by many competent authors writing interesting articles into your website.
March 31st, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Well done!
March 31st, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Congrats for promoting financial literacy in this country – long overdue.
March 31st, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Well done Bernard, David and the team, fantastic achievement!
March 31st, 2009 at 3:52 pm
Pete,
Nothing on the wall. Just the fun every day
cheers
Bernard
March 31st, 2009 at 4:00 pm
An excellent outcome Bernard and many thanks to David Chaston.
March 31st, 2009 at 4:25 pm
I have become morer aware of the financial scene thanks to interest.co.nz and have recommended to my other friends as well. Good work. Curious- How do you generate income? revenue from advertising
March 31st, 2009 at 4:25 pm
this site has been the death of my productivity
March 31st, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Congrats. I find your site extremely useful. I use it all the time!
March 31st, 2009 at 5:10 pm
I would like to add my congratulations to Bernard, David and the team – you deserve more than a cake – but you guys are modest!!
This is a very impressive growth – pulling 120,000 UB’s is huge – your contribution to the business media is a major challenge to the established media barons – keep growing as I know your loyal and ever growing band of new readers will be only too pleased to see you hit 500,000 UB’s.
March 31st, 2009 at 5:53 pm
This is a very good sign all round, and congrats to Bernard and Co for providing this site. NZ needs a site like it and the more people looking at it the better. Now that people are getting rightly worried about economics and the right thing to do for the future, this site is never more important.
“Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders……no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interest, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle.”
- Ludwig von Mises
March 31st, 2009 at 6:06 pm
I had been hunting for some time to find something sensible to read – this site is just the ticket – so thanks team, your doing a great job!!!
March 31st, 2009 at 6:50 pm
Q. A neutral financial site….where can you find one?
A. Right here…. Well done guys!
March 31st, 2009 at 7:32 pm
Well done guys, its a great site and I visit every day. Keep it up !!
Matt
March 31st, 2009 at 8:05 pm
Well done – that is truly impressive.
March 31st, 2009 at 10:23 pm
Fantastic result and very well deserved. An amazing good news chart! Congrats all.
March 31st, 2009 at 10:54 pm
David, Bernard and team
Well done – those are significant figures for a NZ site (that’s not trademe).
This site offers a great service to New Zealanders – as it attempts to raise financial literacy for all.
I’ve personally send literally dozens of people to this site, and will continue to do so.
It’s a daily for me.
Of course – I think you should also thank the economic crisis as well. I’m sure that has driven a lot of traffic your way as well.
One wish – can you bump up your page width – I mean come on – who has a monitor that is set at 800px wide?
BMR
March 31st, 2009 at 10:56 pm
Congratulations to the small hard working team at interest co. nz. You are making an enormous contribution to a better New Zealand.
March 31st, 2009 at 11:35 pm
It is not the hit count that matters much. This site educates ordinary kiwis and makes most kiwi vistors financially wiser. Kudos.
April 1st, 2009 at 5:01 am
Congrats Bernard
Thankyou for being the one of the most balanced members of the fourth estate that you will come across in this country.
Cheers
Iain
http://canterbury.cyberplace.co.nz/community/CAFCA/publications/Miscellaneous/mediaown.pdf (newsmedia ownership in NZ)
April 1st, 2009 at 9:38 am
Indeed… well done. Quite remarkable, considering the short amount of time.
April 1st, 2009 at 9:54 am
A super site !!
It is great having a financial site with plenty of NZ info and lots of interesting discussions
April 1st, 2009 at 10:49 am
Congrats, I always watch and follow the financial develpments here, and I have recommended this Web site to a lot of my friends.
Q) can you clarify what is the significane of having larger audience with unique browsers?, what does that mean , why?
and i agree with blair rogers about the Page width.
April 1st, 2009 at 10:53 am
Blair,
Good point on width. We’re working on that.
Layth
Internet traffic measurers watch unique browsers (ie individual readers) because that cuts out the duplication from an advertising point of view. It’s no use having lots of page impressions with only a few users, as is the case with directbroking. There’s only so many times a reader can see an ad before they start glazing over.
cheers
Bernard
April 1st, 2009 at 10:58 am
Well done guys
IMO this shows what happens when you report the news AND let people have their say on it.
If we can just entice you to move a little more away from the ‘official’ news and statistics and into the real world I’m sure this site would stand out even more from the mainstream rubbish we get elsewhere.
To get you started:
1. Real CPI not the CPI-Lie.
2. Real unemployment
3. Predictions from economists that actually have a good track record. I know you’ve started on that.
April 1st, 2009 at 11:07 am
Wish you could have those video clips in an alternative format, so I could read them. My computer is really old and slow, steam driven I think, you have to light a small fire on start up.
Well done on the big 1000 000 ! You owe Hugh P. a beer !
April 2nd, 2009 at 10:49 pm
Congratulations Bernard and your team. As a kiwi marooned in London I can say that this is the site that I’ve come to rely on for NZ economic news. The quality is first rate and you show the other NZ members of the fourth estate what is and should be possible.
You may be underestimating the number of hits as well because I read this and many other blogs through an RSS reader and only hit the site directly when I feel the urge to comment.
April 3rd, 2009 at 1:03 pm
superb achievement. wonderful example of New Zealand enterprise. congratulations