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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:

1. What days of the week were the most and least popular?
2. What was the percentage browser share for the top 3 browsers?
3. What percentage of IE users used IE6?
4. What resolution was most popular?
5. What were the top 3 keywords for your site?
6. Who were the top 3 referrers to your site?
7. What was the most obscure keyword someone arrived at your site for?
8. What was your most popular blog post?

The results

In alphabetical order…

Abduzeedo

@abduzeedo

1. Most & least popular days?

Most – Monday, Tuesday, Thursday; Least – Saturday/Sunday

2. Browser share?

1. Firefox – 62.51%
2. Internet Explorer – 14.53%
3. Safari – 13.53%

3. IE6 users?

3%

4. Most popular resolution?

1280×800

5. Top search terms?

1. abduzeedo
2. abduzeedo.com
3. photoshop disasters

6. Top referrers?

1. StumbleUpon.com
2. Google.com
3. Digg.com

7. Strangest search term?

None given

8. Most popular post?

45 Amazing Type Faces – Typographic Portraits

Andy Sowards

@andysowards

1. Most & least popular days?

Most – Monday; Least – Sunday

2. Browser share?

1. Firefox – 65.89%
2. Internet Explorer – 15.37%
3. Safari – 10.30%

3. IE6 users?

3.15%

4. Most popular resolution?

1280×800

5. Top search terms?

1. twitter profile design
2. project management cartoon
3. best twitter profiles

6. Top referrers?

1. Twitter.com
2. Designfloat.com
3. Blog.SpoonGraphics.co.uk

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

@chriscoyier

1. Most & least popular days?

Most – Tuesday; Least – Saturday

2. Browser share?

1. Firefox – 63.87%
2. Internet Explorer – 14.07%
3. Safari – 13.25%

3. IE6 users?

3%

4. Most popular resolution?

1280×1024

5. Top search terms?

1. css tricks
2. css transparency
3. css sprites

6. Top referrers?

1. Smashingmagazine.com
2. Stumbleupon.com
3. Google.com

7. Strangest search term?

what computer code looks like

8. Most popular post?

Creating a Slick Auto-Playing Featured Content Slider

David Airey

@davidairey

1. Most & least popular days?

Most – Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday; Least – Saturday/Sunday

2. Browser share?

1. Firefox – 52.49%
2. Internet Explorer – 24.20%
3. Safari – 17.29%

3. IE6 users?

5.81%

4. Most popular resolution?

1280×800

5. Top search terms?

1. design blogs
2. david airey
3. graphic designer

6. Top referrers?

1. PSD.TutsPlus.com
2. StumbleUpon.com
3. LogoDesignLove.com

7. Strangest search term?

gear shift sex

8. Most popular post?

Top 50+ graphic design blogs

Paddy Donnelly

@paddydonnelly

1. Most & least popular days?

Most – Tuesday; Least – Saturday

2. Browser share?

1. Firefox – 61.71%
2. Internet Explorer – 16.54%
3. Safari – 11.72%

3. IE6 users?

3.26%

4. Most popular resolution?

1280×800 – 21.92%

5. Top search terms?

1. how do you twitter
2. how do you twitter?
3. @PaddyDonnelly

6. Top referrers?

1. StumbleUpon.com
2. WebDesignLedger.com
3. Twitter.com

7. Strangest search term?

’80s remix blog’ and ‘Peter Jones’ Socks’

8. Most popular post?

Web 2.0rigami

Pro Blog Design

@problogdesign

1. Most & least popular days?

Most – Wednesday/Thursday; Least – Saturday/Sunday

2. Browser share?

1. Firefox – 66%
2. Internet Explorer – 16%
3. Safari – 9%

3. IE6 users?

3%

4. Most popular resolution?

1280×800

5. Top search terms?

1. Blog design
2. RSS icons
3. Poverty pictures

6. Top referrers?

1. StumbleUpon.com
2. SmashingMagazine.com
3. Delicious.com

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

@smashingmag

1. Most & least popular days?

Most – Thursday; Least – Sunday

2. Browser share?

1. Firefox – 60.5%
2. Safari – 17.1%
3. Internet Explorer – 13.2%

3. IE6 users?

3.9%

4. Most popular resolution?

1280×800

5. Top search terms?

1. photoshop
2. wordpress
3. css

6. Top referrers?

1. Digg.com
2. StumbleUpon.com
3. Delicious.com

7. Strangest search term?

Can’t tell

8. Most popular post?

Desktop Wallpaper Calendar: April 2009

Spoon Graphics

@chrisspooner

1. Most & least popular days?

Most – Monday; Least – Saturday, Sunday

2. Browser share?

1. Firefox – 59.03%
2. Safari – 19.17%
3. Internet Explorer – 12.88%

3. IE6 users?

2.74%

4. Most popular resolution?

1280×800

5. Top search terms?

1. Spoon Graphics
2. SpoonGraphics
3. Poster Design

6. Top referrers?

1. StumbleUpon.com
2. SmashingMagazine.com
3. PSD.tutsplus.com

7. Strangest search term?

corset designers

8. Most popular post?

How to Create Your Own Single Page Portfolio Site

The Design Cubicle

@behoff

1. Most & least popular days?

Most – Monday/Tuesday/Thursday; Least – Saturday/Sunday

2. Browser share?

1. Firefox – 65.82%
2. Internet Explorer – 14.28%
3. Safari – 12.68%

3. IE6 users?

3.42%

4. Most popular resolution?

1280×800

5. Top search terms?

1. interactive pdf
2. social media icons
3. creative business cards

6. Top referrers?

1. StumbleUpon.com
2. Twitter.com
3. Daily.Creattica.com

7. Strangest search term?

nerd shirts

8. Most popular post?

50 Creative Business Cards of 50 Graphic Designers

Vandelay Design

@stevensnell

1. Most & least popular days?

Most – Tuesday; Least – Saturday/Sunday

2. Browser share?

1. Firefox – 57%
2. Internet Explorer – 24%
3. Safari – 10%

3. IE6 users?

5.52%

4. Most popular resolution?

1280×800

5. Top search terms?

1. photography websites
2. photoshop textures
3. church websites

6. Top referrers?

1. StumbleUpon.com
2. Delicious.com
3. Twitter.com

7. Strangest search term?

comentariu nenorocirea secolului

8. Most popular post?

25 Photoshop Tutorials for Working with Textures

Web Designer Depot

@DesignerDepot

1. Most & least popular days?

Most – Weekdays; Least – Weekends

2. Browser share?

1. Firefox – 64%
2. Safari – 13%
3. Internet Explorer – 11%

3. IE6 users?

2.2%

4. Most popular resolution?

1280×800

5. Top search terms?

1. web designer depot
2. webdesigner depot
3. web design depot

6. Top referrers?

1. Digg.com
2. Twitter.com
3. StumbleUpon.com

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:
  1. StumbleUpon
  2. Twitter
  3. Digg
  4. Delicious
  5. Google

  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:
  1. andrew is a awesome 1 ooo yeah babe
  2. what computer code looks like
  3. gear shift sex
  4. Peter Jones’ Socks
  5. poverty pictures
  6. corset designers
  7. nerd shirts
  8. comentariu nenorocirea secolului
  9. 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 :-)

After checking my Google Analytics account recently, I thought it might be of interest to publicise some of my findings. So I selected 1 month, April 1st – April 30th 2009, and here are the findings.

Dashboard

Areas of interest

• The most daily visits was on Monday April 20th (3,840)
• The least daily visits was on Sunday April 5th (548)
• Monday is the most popular day (usually the day I publish blog posts)
• Sunday is the least popular day

Visitors

Areas of interest

• The most popular browser was Firefox (65.64%) followed by Safari (12.42%) and Internet Explorer (12.17%)
• Out of the 12.17% IE users, 17.82% used IE6 (1,037)
• 3 users were using IE5.5
• The most popular OS was Windows (64.38%) followed by Mac (31.10%)
• 595 people visited my site on the iPhone, 124 on the iPod and 3 on the PS3
• The most popular resolution was 1280×800 (19.09%)
• 9.77% had a resolution of 1024×768 and 0.3% had a resolution of 800×600

Traffic sources

Areas of interest

• The top 10 keywords were:
  1. twitter themes
  2. lee munroe
  3. twitter theme
  4. twitter backgrounds
  5. twitter page design
  6. freelance web designer
  7. web design trends
  8. get more twitter followers
  9. twitter profile background
  10. call to action buttons
• 2 people arrived by searching for ‘the spank machine‘
• 1 person arrived by searching for ‘excited hot female‘
• Stumbleupon referred 3,676 people, closely followed with 3,564 from Twitter
• The top 10 referrers were:
  1. stumbleupon.com
  2. twitter.com
  3. smashingmagazine.com
  4. ajaxrain.com
  5. wordpress.org
  6. smashingapps.com
  7. google.com
  8. delicious.com
  9. sixrevisions.com
  10. daily.creattica.com
• 6,979 visits came from Google, while only 58 from yahoo and 38 from msn

Content

Areas of interest

• The top 10 pages were:
  1. Homepage
  2. Designing out of the box
  3. 15 beautiful typography inspired websites
  4. 25 hot female web designers part 2
  5. Portfolio
  6. Call to action buttons
  7. 30 creative twitter theme backgrounds
  8. 5 quick and easy ways to optimise your website
  9. 25 hot female web designers
  10. Blog
• Generally, the top 10 landing pages were the same as the top 10 exit pages, which were the same as the top 10 visited pages (therefore my bounce rate isn’t very good)

Conclusion

So what does all this mean?

• Constantly writing useful blog posts on your site is a good idea
• Writing guest posts for other sites can be useful
• Being active on Twitter matters
• Posting blog posts on the weekend isn’t as effective as during the week
• There are people who still use IE6
• You can pretty much forget about having to design for 800×600 anymore. Most users have at least 1024×768 and higher resolutions
• Remember people will access your site on different platforms, including mobile/iPhone
• Submit your site & posts to social sites like Delicious and Stumbleupon
• Twitter is a hot search topic at the minute

Of course these conclusions are only drawn from my readers. Things may be different for your site depending on your target market.

What are your stats like? What’s the oddest thing someone has searched for to find your site? How many people use IE6? Please share below.