American Idol and WinPatrol PLUS
For many years, I’ve used a great little tool for web statistics called Urchin (which I only found out today is now owned by Google). It’s great to know what countries folks come from and especially how they were referred to our web pages. It shows what search terms were used and how many times WinPatrol is downloaded, even on an hourly basis. If we had a marketing department or advertising budget it would be extremely valuable stuff but for the most part its just fun to review.
This month I noticed a surge in visits and eventually traced them to a great review in the April issue of PC World (p41). Not only did Steve Bass of PC World tell folks WinPatrol was “a must-have tool” but strongly urged his readers to spend the $25 for our PLUS version.
As I reviewed our hourly web traffic I noticed something odd. Most days we have an increase in web visits and WinPatrol PLUS purchases around 8–9PM. Recently in the middle of the week, the numbers have been down. I reviewed the stats further and discovered the decrease was also tied to different time zones. Something specific was taking our users away.
I finally have concluded that like this years Winter Olympics on NBC, the slump in WinPatrol PLUS sales is due to the “American Idol Effect”. I wouldn’t have believed it but the numbers don’t lie.
posted by Bill Pytlovany | 12:38 PM
5 Comments:
Regarding hit counts on your website.
I just installed Firefox and am learning to use tabs. I have a folder called Schdy which includes your Blog page. In the morning I just open that folder in tabs. Does this mean it reports a hit to your site cause it loads in the tabs? Just curious.
Hi Cel,
Nope, I don't see hits each time you open the tab. Do you have it pointing to http://billpstudios.blogspot.com/?
If you notice a new feed count on the left hand side, that indicates how many people actually subscribe via an RSS feed. If your tab is pointing to http://feeds.feedburner.com/BitsFromBill than you only count as one no matter how often you open the tab.
Thanks
Points to billpstudios.blogspot.com
i wonder if winpatrol PLUS could be my only paying customer? does it do everything i need? i don't do anything elaborate online...i check my email; do tons and tons of internet research; i assume scotty(who has been living in my computer for several years) - rent-free/////..scotty will alert me when someone uninvited tries to visit? what more would i need? would scotty, if i pay him, be able to tell me why, for the past month,my YAHOO bulk mail has been getting about 100 msg. PER DAY..nasty, porn-like messages...i have to filter thru them b/c i always have one or two that DON"T belong in BULK...and i hve to rescue them...but can SCOTTY find out what the hell is wrong with YAHOO?? waiting to hear from you
Hi Tangela,
I'm pleased that Scotty has been behaving himself and doing everything he can to help on your system.
Spam is a whole different problem which WinPatrol isn't designed for. I don't think it's a Yahoo only problem.
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