With the start of 2020, I decided to check out the most popular pages on Ann Arbor with Kids for 2019. I also looked at some of the most popular event listings and information on our readers.
Overall Page Views Comparisons
For 2019, total page views were down 4%. The home page showed a decrease of 5% while the events page was up 4%. However the number of users was up 8%. We will be putting an effort into increasing pages
The biggest decrease in views was in Easter/Spring Break content and some summer content.
Top Visited Pages in 2019
It should come as no surprise that the top two pages are the the Events Calendar and the Home Page. Beyond those, the most popular pages are a mix of seasonal content that receives concentrated page views and evergreen content that receives year round traffic.
- Events Calendar
- Home Page
- 2019-2020 Ann Arbor Public Schools Calendar
- Winter/Spring Break Schedules through 2022
- Kids Eat Free
- Everyday Indoor Activities
- Ann Arbor Fireworks Displays
- Swimming Pools/Places to Get Wet
- Toddlers Events
- Fourth of July Celebrations
- Ann Arbor Trick or Treat Times
- Ann Arbor Christmas Lights
Evidently the school schedule is a very popular topic.
Top Content by Month
I also decided to look at the most popular content on a monthly basis to help plan our 2020 Editorial Calendar. I set a minimum number of page views and shared the articles that hit that threshold so some months have more listings than others.
- January
- February
- March
- April
- May
- June
- July
- Fourth of July Celebrations
- Fireworks Displays
- Fourth of July Parade (Event Listing)
- 11 Places to Get Wet: Ann Arbor Swimming Pools, Water Parks, and Sprayscapes
- Open/Closed on 4th of July
- Saline Fireworks (Event Listing)
- Kids Eat Free
- 2019-2020 Ann Arbor Public Schools Calendar
- Blueberry Picking
- Cherry Picking
- Fourth of July Week Picks
- August
- September
- October
- November
- December
Top Events
I was also wondering which events on the calendar where the most popular with our readers. I used the same threshold as above, but looked over the entire year.
- Ann Arbor Jaycees Fourth of July Parade
- Michigan Stadium Movie Night
- Ann Arbor Jaycees Summer Carnival
- Ann Arbor Airport Pancake Breakfast
- Saline Fireworks
- Briarwood Mall Boo Bash
- Michigan Challenge Balloon Festival
- Ypsi Egg Hunt
- Milan Fair Fireworks
- Trick or Treat on the River
- Mother’s Day Brunch at Weber’s
- Pittsfield Township Harvest Festival
- Taste of Ann Arbor
- Townie Street Party
- Giant Books Sale
- Halloween Treat Parade
- Springfest
Busiest Times on the Site
When I last ran this analysis for 2017, Halloween was the busiest month on the site. June and July were significantly higher than October for both 2018 and 2019.
The busiest individual days were:
- July 4
- July 3
- October 31 (Halloween)
- July 2
- October 26 (Saturday before Halloween)
- April 20 (day before Easter)
- June 30
- June 21
- July 1
The busiest times of day are:
- Early Morning (5-8a)
- Mid-Morning (9a-noon)
About You (the Readers)
It is no surprise that most of our readers are from the surrounding area. Surprisingly there was a large set of traffic from Nashville – but only from February through November. It does not look like bot traffic, so I am wondering if it is a misclassified city.
Nearly 2/3 of our readers are on mobile devices (phones and tablets), mostly Apple devices.
Our readers are becoming more conscious of privacy settings. Analytics only picked up demographics for 1/3 of users, a smaller percentage than in the past. Based on that data, 2/3 of readers are female, 1/3 are male. Just over half of the readers are between 25 and 44.
Organic search is the largest source of our traffic, followed by Direct Traffic. Be sure to bookmark Ann Arbor with Kids to let you easily come back to the site. Social media traffic, especially Facebook is down. Pinterest traffic is up, but a small percentage of our users.
What’s Next
Obviously for 2020, we’d like to see continued growth across the board. Looking at the popular posts, helps us make plans for 2020 content. The goal is to add additional seasonal articles and update them with more lead time before the season. Finally, we are adding some additional evergreen content which will draw interest year round.
We are going to focus on more regular Facebook sharing of existing evergreen content and discussion questions. We will also be focusing on Pinterest to try and build our traffic from there.
