October 2013 was kind of a big month for YWS! It started off with a bang when a few classrooms in the Philippines began using YWS as part of a homework assignment, but then things began to slow down a bit as we approached Halloween. So how did things turn out overall? Read on to find out.
Overall
Visits: 51,704
Pageviews: 545,323
Unique Visitors: 15,364
Avg. Visit Duration: 13 minutes and 59 seconds
YWS Specific Statistics
Reviews: 2,270
Literary Works: 656
Storybooks: 1,272
New Members: 468
Forum posts: 1,952
Profile Comments: 13,421
Mentions: 3,178
Top 10 Countries
1. United States
2. United Kingdom
3. Australia
4. Philippines
5. Canada
6. Ireland
7. New Zealand
8. India
9. United Arab Emirates
10. Saudi Arabia
Top 10 Cities
1. London
2. Manila
3. Makita City
4. Sydney
5. New York
6. Dublin
7. Auckland
8. Chicago
9. Brisbane
10. Indianapolis
Top 10 YWS Areas
1. Homepage
2. Notifications
3. People Tab
4. Forums
5. Storybooks
6. Private Messages
7. Green Room
8. Blogs
9. All Literary
10. Publishing Center
(sidenote: Including all the literary areas together would place it right below the People tab)
ANALYSIS!
The classes that used YWS as part of an homework assignment in early October had an undeniable impact on YWS. The Philippines was pushed up the country rankings to displace Canada, and two cities in the Philippines made it into the top 10. However, the impact still wasn't all that big.
For one, the Philippines is regularly in the country rankings, and Manila usually makes it in the top 10 cities. Plus, since the classes were all in the same area, it makes it very easy to quantify their impact: ~10,000 more pageviews than normal, and ~300 more unique visitors. By contrast, YWS usually gets about 18,000 pageviews and about 900 unique visitors per day right now.
The biggest impact was probably in the literary works area, which would have been exactly 65 less.
Beyond that, October ended up being a somewhat subdued month! The site had a slight decline in activity from September, and reviews also fell quite a bit. But, posting in storybooks has finally picked up after declining for three months straight.
Looking forward, I expect November to look a lot like October. Historically, both months tend to be pretty similar for YWS. So take this month as a chance to breath a little, because we're getting close to the December-January period, which usually sees big increases in activity (and I do mean big).
