It is 8.30 on a Sunday morning and the numbers active on the Cricket Leinster website is slowly growing to over 20 as the early risers check out on the results from the previous day. It is a small number but it will gradually grow during the day to over 200 from about 17.00 as people check in on the final stages of matches around the Province.
Over the weekend and into Monday and Tuesday one can expect to get over a 1000 unique visitors [as they are called] per day. Even mid-week we can expect around 800. This number has grown significantly since the same time last year.
The figures for the first month of this year [from 1st April] show the total number of unique visitors rising to above 9000 [an increase of 33% compared with the same period last year], with visits up 40% [from 25,000 to 35,000] and page views up 50% .
As one might expect must interest comes from Ireland [87%] but there is 6% from the UK and over 100 visits each from Australia, US, India, New Zealand, France and the Netherlands. 80% of the visitors are returning to the site.
The main interest in the site [beyond the Home page] is in the news, results and live scores sections, followed by fixtures, clubs and regulations.
For those interested in the technical details – just over 36% of visitors come through search engines, about the same volume come as referrals from other sites and 27% come direct to the site. As an example of the importance of social media – by far the highest number of referrals come via twitter and Facebook. A considerable way behind we have Cricket Ireland, and then the clubs themselves – Clontarf, Merrion, Leinster, Cork County, YMCA and Phoenix in that order.
It is now about 9.00 – and obviously people have gone back to bed as the number is now only 12 [though 4 of these are first time visitors]