Popular Design Blogs Share Their Stats
A few weeks ago I posted a blog post analysing my stats. It got a pretty good response as we don’t often see a lot of websites’ stats these days.
To follow this up I asked a few design blogs that I regularly visit to share their stats. No specific numbers, just percentages and interesting tidbits.
The questions I asked
Looking at your stats for 1st April 2009 – 30th April 2009:
- What days of the week were the most and least popular?
- What was the percentage browser share for the top 3 browsers?
- What percentage of IE users used IE6?
- What resolution was most popular?
- What were the top 3 keywords for your site?
- Who were the top 3 referrers to your site?
- What was the most obscure keyword someone arrived at your site for?
- What was your most popular blog post?
The results
In alphabetical order…
Abduzeedo
1. Most & least popular days?
Most – Monday, Tuesday, Thursday; Least – Saturday/Sunday
2. Browser share?
- Firefox – 62.51%
- Internet Explorer – 14.53%
- Safari – 13.53%
3. IE6 users?
3%
4. Most popular resolution?
1280×800
5. Top search terms?
- abduzeedo
- abduzeedo.com
- photoshop disasters
6. Top referrers?
7. Strangest search term?
None given
8. Most popular post?
45 Amazing Type Faces – Typographic Portraits
Andy Sowards
1. Most & least popular days?
Most – Monday; Least – Sunday
2. Browser share?
- Firefox – 65.89%
- Internet Explorer – 15.37%
- Safari – 10.30%
3. IE6 users?
3.15%
4. Most popular resolution?
1280×800
5. Top search terms?
- twitter profile design
- project management cartoon
- best twitter profiles
6. Top referrers?
7. Strangest search term?
andrew is a awesome 1 ooo yeah babe
8. Most popular post?
20+ Best songs to Listen to for Inspiration while Developing/Designing Projects
CSS Tricks
1. Most & least popular days?
Most – Tuesday; Least – Saturday
2. Browser share?
- Firefox – 63.87%
- Internet Explorer – 14.07%
- Safari – 13.25%
3. IE6 users?
3%
4. Most popular resolution?
1280×1024
5. Top search terms?
- css tricks
- css transparency
- css sprites
6. Top referrers?
7. Strangest search term?
what computer code looks like
8. Most popular post?
Creating a Slick Auto-Playing Featured Content Slider
David Airey
1. Most & least popular days?
Most – Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday; Least – Saturday/Sunday
2. Browser share?
- Firefox – 52.49%
- Internet Explorer – 24.20%
- Safari – 17.29%
3. IE6 users?
5.81%
4. Most popular resolution?
1280×800
5. Top search terms?
- design blogs
- david airey
- graphic designer
6. Top referrers?
7. Strangest search term?
gear shift sex
8. Most popular post?
Paddy Donnelly
1. Most & least popular days?
Most – Tuesday; Least – Saturday
2. Browser share?
- Firefox – 61.71%
- Internet Explorer – 16.54%
- Safari – 11.72%
3. IE6 users?
3.26%
4. Most popular resolution?
1280×800 – 21.92%
5. Top search terms?
- how do you twitter
- how do you twitter?
- @PaddyDonnelly
6. Top referrers?
7. Strangest search term?
’80s remix blog’ and ‘Peter Jones’ Socks’
8. Most popular post?
Pro Blog Design
1. Most & least popular days?
Most – Wednesday/Thursday; Least – Saturday/Sunday
2. Browser share?
- Firefox – 66%
- Internet Explorer – 16%
- Safari – 9%
3. IE6 users?
3%
4. Most popular resolution?
1280×800
5. Top search terms?
- Blog design
- RSS icons
- Poverty pictures
6. Top referrers?
7. Strangest search term?
Just that “poverty pictures” has been one of my top keywords for months now!
8. Most popular post?
35 Awesome user interface design tutorials
Smashing Magazine
1. Most & least popular days?
Most – Thursday; Least – Sunday
2. Browser share?
- Firefox – 60.5%
- Safari – 17.1%
- Internet Explorer – 13.2%
3. IE6 users?
3.9%
4. Most popular resolution?
1280×800
5. Top search terms?
- photoshop
- wordpress
- css
6. Top referrers?
7. Strangest search term?
Can’t tell
8. Most popular post?
Desktop Wallpaper Calendar: April 2009
Spoon Graphics
1. Most & least popular days?
Most – Monday; Least – Saturday, Sunday
2. Browser share?
- Firefox – 59.03%
- Safari – 19.17%
- Internet Explorer – 12.88%
3. IE6 users?
2.74%
4. Most popular resolution?
1280×800
5. Top search terms?
- Spoon Graphics
- SpoonGraphics
- Poster Design
6. Top referrers?
7. Strangest search term?
corset designers
8. Most popular post?
How to Create Your Own Single Page Portfolio Site
The Design Cubicle
1. Most & least popular days?
Most – Monday/Tuesday/Thursday; Least – Saturday/Sunday
2. Browser share?
- Firefox – 65.82%
- Internet Explorer – 14.28%
- Safari – 12.68%
3. IE6 users?
3.42%
4. Most popular resolution?
1280×800
5. Top search terms?
- interactive pdf
- social media icons
- creative business cards
6. Top referrers?
7. Strangest search term?
nerd shirts
8. Most popular post?
50 Creative Business Cards of 50 Graphic Designers
Vandelay Design
1. Most & least popular days?
Most – Tuesday; Least – Saturday/Sunday
2. Browser share?
- Firefox – 57%
- Internet Explorer – 24%
- Safari – 10%
3. IE6 users?
5.52%
4. Most popular resolution?
1280×800
5. Top search terms?
- photography websites
- photoshop textures
- church websites
6. Top referrers?
7. Strangest search term?
comentariu nenorocirea secolului
8. Most popular post?
25 Photoshop Tutorials for Working with Textures
Web Designer Depot
1. Most & least popular days?
Most – Weekdays; Least – Weekends
2. Browser share?
- Firefox – 64%
- Safari – 13%
- Internet Explorer – 11%
3. IE6 users?
2.2%
4. Most popular resolution?
1280×800
5. Top search terms?
- web designer depot
- webdesigner depot
- web design depot
6. Top referrers?
7. Strangest search term?
girl talk 2009, free sexy, ilastfm css
8. Most popular post?
Operating system interface design between 1981-2009
Conclusions
- Popularity of the day obviously depends on what day you post but it’s obvious that not as many people are active on the internet over the weekend
- Firefox average share: 61.71%
- IE average share: 16%
- Safari average share: 13.36%
- 3.55% of visitors still use IE6 (average)
- The most popular resolution (for every blog but 1) is 1280×800
- A lot of users do enter your domain name or site name into Google (and don’t just go directly to your site using the address bar) – I used to think it was just my girlfriend did this ;-)
- The top referrers are:
So it’s worth including submit links to social sites at the end of your posts (and tweeting about them)
- The strangest search terms are:
- andrew is a awesome 1 ooo yeah babe
- what computer code looks like
- gear shift sex
- Peter Jones’ Socks
- poverty pictures
- corset designers
- nerd shirts
- comentariu nenorocirea secolului
- free sexy
- Giving away free stuff is a good way to get traffic to your site
- Offering ‘How-to’ tutorials is another good way to get traffic
- Lists of useful resources are also very popular
Share your stats
Please feel free to share your stats below and how they compare with the above conclusions. In particular I’m a fan of the obscure & strange search terms :-)
Related articles
41 Appreciated Comments
Have a comment? Tweet @leemunroe and I'll be glad to respond.
On the , Simon Bennett said:
Nice post, Intresting that the weekends are all dead. Also good to see Firefox with the largest shair there.
Simon
On the , David Airey said:
Great idea, Lee.
Andy, was that you who searched for “andrew is a awesome 1 ooo yeah babe”? ;)
On the , Brad C said:
Very fascinating and informative post. Interesting to see how many folks get a lot of traffic from stumbleupon. It’s also interesting (but not surprising) that Firefox has such a high percentage compared to the general web surfing population.
On the , kat neville said:
great post! I especially loved the “most random” bit. Checked my own and found this one:
cheese rolling boots
I’m sure it was based on a twitter message as I don’t ever recall writing about the merits of boots while doing cheese rolling!
haha
On the , Andy Sowards said:
David, How did you know??!! lol I was the one who searched for ‘gear shift sex’ too LOL
Thanks for including me in this post Lee! It is great getting a look at the other designer blogs that I respect so much!
Keep up the great work!
On the , David Airey said:
Hahaha. You and me both, Andy.
On the , Teddy said:
Thanks for sharing the statistics, Lee! Looks like Sunday is the slowest day of the week, and many sites are getting really funny search terms! “Gear shift sex” cracked me up, heh. Maybe you could share your stats too – afterall, you run a design blog as well, and I can’t wait to hear from you the weirdest search terms ever.
On the , Andy Sowards said:
Hey Teddy, Lee shared his blog stats in an earlier post http://www.leemunroe.com/website-stats-april/
@David, Now Lee is going to benefit from our keywords on this page LOL ‘ooo yeah babe gear shift sex’
On the , Teddy said:
@Andy *bangs head against wall* My bad! And thanks for pointing that out. Heh.
On the , Brian Hoff said:
Great idea for a different kind of post Lee! Really enjoyed reading the stats of all these fantastic blogs and appreciate being included among them.
I thought it was interesting to see such a wide range of ‘Top Referrers’ for similarly focused blogs. Thanks again.
On the , David Airey said:
Andy,
Yep, I notice Lee ranks top for that search term now.
Lee,
I hope you have a caching plugin installed.
On the , kristen kuhns said:
Interesting! Thanks for sharing this. I’m surprised and yet not surprised to see readers use firefox to such an overwhelming majority when IE renders sites a bit nicer than FF. If other designers I’d have expected more Safari. [FF firebug is the best thing ever.] Compare that to our site, which is not technical people and we have over 80% IE and even some netscape users still! :)
Also interesting that traffic is highest during the work week.
On the , DesignApplause said:
Great idea to niche survey. Top referrers always of interest and wonder if the referrals come from content alone or more so working that network.
Curious: did you ask anyone and they declined to share?
On the , Rahul Jadhav said:
Nice post…good to see that FF has a greater share here
On the , web2000 said:
Great and useful post you have here ‘ popular design blogs share their stats ‘. Thanks!
On the , Duncan Jimbo said:
Although Firefox takes the largest share of visitors, the stats lean towards it because it is mostly designers and developers who visit these design blogs and they know more about the issues with IE. Would be interesting to see stats from a non-design blog to see how these compare.
On the , Kawsar Ali said:
This is such as well researched post. As well as true and amusing. Thanks for sharing. When will IE6 die though? Party at my house if it does.
On the , Yaili said:
I wanna play too! :)
1. Most popular day: Thursday; Least popular day: Saturday
2. Firefox 66%, Safari 15%, IE 9%
3. 1% of IE6 users
4. Most popular resolution: 1680x1050px
5. Top search terms: “web designer notebook”, “beautiful tables css”, “beautiful form css”
6. Top referrers: CSS Globe, Twitter, Google
7. Strangest term: “why would we add an “id” to a table web design”
8. Most popular post: 25+ Unusual Flickr Groups For Inspiration
OK, now back to work! ;)
On the , Fubiz said:
Great compilation
On the , Renyer said:
Nice post, very interesting!
On the , Walter - Webdesigner Depot said:
I found it amazing that most share very similar stats… great post!
On the , David P. said:
Interesting stuff – thanks Lee.
More fuel for the move to 1080 grids!
On the , Manda said:
This is such an interesting post! Thanks for putting it together. Although most of my readers also use Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and even Opera, I do have an investment company client, and 33% of their users are on IE6!! I guess it helps to have designers – not investors – as readers :)
On the , Lee said:
@kat: “cheese rolling boots” – lol
@David @Andy: Yep, I’m now going to get a hoard of traffic through for ooo yeah babe gear shift sex :)
@kristen: over 80% IE? Just goes to show the difference depending on your target audience. Still Netscape users too? Wow!
@DesignApplause: Interesting to see the amount of traffic StumbleUpon brings. No one declined, all happy to contribute
@Duncan: Would definitely be interesting to see browser share from other fields e.g. Google, BBC, New York Times etc.
@Yaili: Fantastic, thanks for sharing. CSS Globe would be quite a good referrer for me too. Interesting that 1680×1050px was your most popular res.
@Manda: 33% on IE6? Most likely a lot of them are unable to upgrade for one reason or another
Thanks for all the comments. If anyone else wants to share their stats go for it :)
On the , Michael Martin said:
Thanks for asking me Lee! :)
Pretty amazing to see just how low IE6 usage has gotten in the web development niche. Thankfully!
On the , Brian Jørgensen // brianzet said:
Interesting read..
Some of those strangest search terms are a kinda wierd :-D
On the , Zach Dunn said:
I’m loving these random keywords. Anyways, here’s the statistics for Build Internet:
1. What days of the week were the most and least popular?
Tuesday & Wednesday
2. What was the percentage browser share for the top 3 browsers?
67% Firefox
12.5% IE
10% Safari
3. What percentage of IE users used IE6?
19%
4. What resolution was most popular?
1280 x 1024
5. What were the top 3 keywords for your site?
jquery navigation
jquery slideshow
flex xml
6. Who were the top 3 referrers to your site?
cssglobe.com
devsnippets.com
smashingmagazine.com
7. What was the most obscure keyword someone arrived at your site for?
“you’d be good to go in about 30 seconds, right?”
8. What was your most popular blog post?
Sliding Boxes and Captions with jQuery
On the , Chris Wastell said:
Am I the only one who finds it quite intriguing to see what sort of sites and blogs other people follow? It’s the kind of nosiness I’m sure everyone loves in the same way people love to know what other people are doing or my personal favorite when people stare throw the windows of posh sports cars there is no chance of them ever being able to afford!
On the , Lee said:
@Michael: Thanks for taking the time to contribute
@Zach: Thanks for sharing Zach. The browser distribution seems to be pretty much the same across all design blogs. Gotta wonder who’d be searching for “you’d be good to go in about 30 seconds, right?” lol
@Chris: Definitely, always interesting to see what other designers are up to. How they work, what websites they follow etc. Maybe that’s a potential blog post in itself ;)
On the , Jeevan said:
Great collection of blogs.
On the , Dainis Graveris said:
really good idea for very informative and valuable post! This is outstanding resource actually for marketing, though many top searches and top sources were very obvious.
Interesting reading anyway :)
On the , Hristina said:
Yes, i like that post. Is very informative! But i have one more question 11. What are the most comments post?
Because sometimes there is the different between the popular post and popular post with comments !
Sorry my english!
On the , Ronald | Naldz Graphics said:
Lol some of the Strangest search term are funny. Nice compilation btw
On the , Calgary Graphic Design said:
This is one of the most interesting posts anywhere that I’ve read in a long time. Perhaps I’m a stataholic, but seeing how others do is incredibly useful.
And yea, Strangest search terms are great!
On the , Analise Smith said:
Really great post! Kudos on doing your homework. I’m an avid digger and greatly underestimated stumble upon! And oy vay for IE6.
On the , E-commerce Web Design New York said:
Excellent collection…..thanks for sharing this post.
On the , Emilie-Schubert said:
This brings me to an idea:…
On the , Abhilash said:
Thanx for your idea.
Stumble upon & Digg had been a gr8 use for me.
Am new into tweeting so need to make my base stronger there too.
BTW In some other post, “the spanking machine” was funny. lolz….:D
On the , Isle of Wight web design said:
We pass many kinds of benefits to our clients by bringing a sharper focus to their projects. The environment of working here is totally fantastic, the air smells good, and our creative horizons are boundless. We work on the Isle of Wight.
On the , clea walford said:
great idea – very informative and valuable post!