For those that have been keeping an eye on Web Design Weekly, you probably have noticed that things have been extremely quite…
The first half of the year was quite productive. Lots of new articles, a range of site modification and great newsletter growth. It was shaping up to be a great year until August arrived. During the first half of the year my full-time job was pretty quiet so I had the motivation and energy to tinker and work on WDW in the evenings. That all changed pretty quick when we landed an awesome project at work and I was knee-deep in some pretty interesting development.
Each day of the working week I was being pushed to learn and execute, leaving me longing to unplug each evening.
During that time, I often felt guilty for not working more on WDW, but in reality, I was kaput and needed to rest.
As that project is winding up for me in the next couple of months, I look forward to getting back into a regular schedule, sharing my new-found knowledge and taking WDW to the next level.
Statistics
The newsletter currently has 23,320 subscribers, which is an increase of 4,515 from this time last year. It might not look that awesome in terms of growth, but in May after learning that Campaign Monitor will no longer be sponsoring the newsletter, I decided to clean up the list and remove 4,032 subscribers that had a low engagement rate to save on sending costs.
I have mixed feelings about removing subscribers and I’m not sure I’d do it again. Anyway, it’s done now.
Whilst on the topic of Campaign Monitor, if you happen to be keen to be a major sponsor of WDW, please reach out. I’d love to talk!
The blog has been quietly ticking away. There were 627,018 Page Views this year, up from 473,695 last year (32.37% growth). Sessions grew by 42.37% (543,703 vs 381,889) and Users grew by 50.34% (457,925 vs 304,588). Not too bad for not really blogging much. The blog has so much potential; I really look forward to making the most of it.
On the social media front the WDW twitter account has 3,234 followers and the Facebook page has 2,398 likes. I’m pretty bad at being consistent with social media – something that I’d really like to improve in the coming year.
Goal Review
It’s pretty poor form that I didn’t do an end of year review last year. I remember having it on my to-do list but life and work got the better of me. My bad.
2017 Goals
- Give the WDW blog a fresh coat of paint
- 1 million page views for the blog. Doable if I blog on a regular basis
- 30,000 newsletter subscribers
- Find a major sponsor for the newsletter
Thanks!
So that is a wrap for 2016. Not the best year as far as pushing WDW forward to its full potential, but other aspects of life really succeeded. It feels good to put time aside to focus on some new goals and start working towards them.
To all of you, happy New Year! I hope it’s a good one.
The post 2016 in Review appeared first on Web Design Weekly.
by Jake Bresnehan via Web Design Weekly