Louisville.com site visits up 50 percent in 2011, 79 percent since I became editor in 2010

In 2011 site visits to Louisville.com increased 50 percent compared to 2010. Traffic was up 79 percent on the year compared to 2009 (I became editor-in-chief of the site on Jan. 1, 2010, working just 20 hours a week as the site’s only paid editorial employee).

Site visits to Louisville.com, 2011 (blue) compared to 2009 (orange), select to enlarge

A big thank you to the site’s readers, writers, interns, and owners!

According to compete.com, Louisville.com is now the city’s most visited independent website, trailing only the sites for the local newspaper and TV stations overall.

The raw data, via Google Analytics (according to the 2010 census, the population of Louisville/Jefferson County is 741,096 people).

2011

1,194,066 visits
926,712 unique visitors
2,753,479 pageviews
2.31 pages per visit
00:01:59 average time on site

2010

798,643 visits
590,941 unique Visitors
2,136,804 pageviews
2.68 pages per visit
00:02:31 average time on site

2009 (before I was hired as editor)

665,561 visits
517,337 unique visitors
1,995,714 pageviews
3.00 pages per visit
00:02:27 average time on site

For what I’ve done to help achieve this grown, check out my editing page.

Louisville.com is again a Breeders’ Cup media partner

In 2011, Louisville.com (me = editor-in-chief) is again a media partner of the Breeders’ Cup, horse racing’s world championship.

We’ll be at Churchill Downs all week, covering everything from the draw to the post-Breeders’ Cup Classic press conferences.

Photo: Courtesy Breeders’ Cup

Louisville.com places second in 2011 LEO Weekly Readers’ Choice awards

Hot on the heels of winning Louisville Magazine‘s Best of Louisville award for local website, Louisville.com (me = editor-in-chief) placed second in the 2011 LEO Weekly Readers’ Choice awards for best local website.

Congrats to LouisvilleKy.com on doing a better job stuffing the ballot box than we did (I really thought hiring those Vietnamese Elancers to vote for us each day would’ve paid off better).

Photo: Courtesy LEO Weekly

Louisville.com: 1 million visits

Some time this evening Louisville.com will have it’s 1 millionth visit since I became editor-in-chief at the beginning of 2010. So I figured now’s a good time to recap the site’s accomplishments since I started this part-time job (with the exception of Derby and Breeders’ Cup weeks, at most I spend 20 hours a week on the site):

• Gone from two writers (one of whom was me) to 38.
• Increased site visits from 45,000 during my first 31 days as editor to 97,700 in the most recent 31 days.
• Increased the site’s Facebook presence from 100 to 2,007 fans. Every post from Louisville.com appears on its Facebook fan page, making that social networking site Louisville.com’s fourth biggest source of traffic.

For more details, read this description of my duties.

In the next few months, we expect to

• upgrade the site’s operating system from Drupal 5.x to 6.x, improving both its stability and usability
• launch an iPhone application
• double our monthly visitors yet again
• become profitable (we’re close!)

Thanks to the site’s owners, readers, and writers. All three groups have been great to work with.

The Economist takes a dig at language-disadvantaged NGOs

Before I was splitting my time between editing Louisville.com and freelance writing, I was a full-time editor working mostly for Defense and United States Agency for International Development (USAID) contractors in the Washington, DC area. “Anyone here speak NGOish?: Africa’s newest country already knows the gobbledegook of aid” in this week’s Economist provides good insight on why there’s no shortage of work for an editor who’s versed in nongovernmental organizations (NGO) speak—although shame on the author for not using “key,” which NGO speak mandates be used to describe everything lest people think the organization is wasting its time with nonessential business.

One of my biggest frustrations was that NGOs often use this insider language when trying to describe their work to outside audiences and then wonder why the can’t make a better connection with those groups. Perhaps someday an editor will help NGOs build their capacity and empower them to use language that communicates better with key stakeholders. Alas, I barely made a dent—although coupled with my jobs in the defense and financial industries, I found enough material to write a 750-word satirical business dictionary.