Formula for a site's growth.

measuring site growth.

[Mabrook]

Hi,

Is there any formula that measure the site growth in regard to the number of visitors and time.
Regards.

[karmov]

There are no standard formulas on the web in general really... The web includes the single biggest variable on the earth, people. This makes general formulas/trends/patterns very difficult to pin down and standardize.

What kind of information are you trying to find out?

[Mabrook]

I want to measure if my site growing well in regard to the increased number of visitors.

[karmov]

Again, this is very difficult to pinpoint. The word "well" is very hard to define. Some people can have very successful sites with a handful of loyal visitors, while others can have thousands of visitors per day and be barely paying the bills.

You need to identify what your goals are before you can judge whether or not your site is growing well. If your goal is to have millions of visitors per day, you need to figure out how long you're willing to work towards that goal, then figure out how quickly your site needs to grow. If you're trying to sell x number of widgets per day, find out how many visitors it takes you to sell one widget on average and then work out the math from there.

Growth on the web is a vague term. You need to look at your website's goals. Once you have a clear idea of what your goals are, then you can decide what metrics to use to measure your growth.

I personally run an information web site. My goal is to get as many people to view our information/brand. That means unique visitors are key for me. That's what I measure for growth. However for someone who sells something, sales are the bottom line. Whether they come from lots of unique visits or lots of repeat traffic is a secondary measure for them. Number of sales will be the yardstick by which they measure their growth.

I hope this helps a little to put you question into perspective.

[karmov]

Oh, and before I forget;

Welcome to Webmaster World Mabrook

:)

[Mabrook]

Thank you Karmov, but I am still confused little bit,
I believe that every site - the site that goal is to have millions of visitors per day - that have millions of visitors did not collect this number of visitors one at a time, I believe that like this site have growth step by step, so it must be a standard criteria for all sites to measure the number of visitors per monthe as example or there must be a standard growth that can use it to measure our sites groth.
Ex. the best site has growth rate: 400 new user per month
I want to measure my site growth depend on this upove best site and say-suppose my site have 100 new user per month-: 100/400 growth rate.

Thanks

[karmov]

Growth on the web tends to come in spurts rather than any type of linear trends. At least in my experience that's been the case. For example, when you get snother site to link to yours, you will often see an immediate impact on your numbers, but that new traffic will reamain steady from then on most of the time. If you move up in the Search Engine rankings for a popular keyword, you will not see linear growth their either. Your traffic will spike and remain roughly constant until your position changes for that keyword. The same trend tends to apply when you introduce a new feature or service. You will often get a spike and then traffic will level off rather than sustain steady growth.

In the end, the main variable for your growth will be where and how you will put effort into marketing your site.

Again, although it is always a dream to get millions of visitors to your site, it's not always a goal. Millions of visitors cost money, and if you operate in a niche market, you don't need millions of visitors, you only need a few thousand that are interested in our site/product.

But back to your question, I think if you're trying to get millions of viewers to your site, then the formula is simple, figure out how long you're willing to work towards that goal, and then divide a million by that number of months and you'll have your answer as to how much growth you need each month.

These ideas/suggestions/opinions are all based on my experience, so others may have different/better advice than I do.

[Mabrook]

Then how can I measure the success of my site?

[karmov]

I would suggest similar ways that companies measure success. They set out acheivable goals for themselves and then strive to reach them. Then if they set new goals based on the experience they've gained, either by raising or lowering the bar.

It's all about what you want out of your site. Do you want it to bring in a little bit of money each month or do you want it be what you earn a living off of. It is possible to do both, but each requires a different commitment and strategy. Be honest with yourself, how much time are you really gonig to spend on this? 10 hours a week for 4 weeks, or 70 hours a week for the next year? Each time investment will yield different levels traffic or revenue.

You can't expect to make millions off a site you spend 10 hours a week for 4 weeks, but if you make enough to cover your hosting bills and have some extra each month, that could easily be considered a success. But if you generate 10 times that revenue with a site you spent 70 hours a week for a year on, but the hosting bills are so expensive that you don't make enough to cover them, then some would say that's not a success.

It's all relative, there's no real set formula for success expect the following:

(your effort)*(your experience)*(opportunity)*(luck)/(your expectations) = level of success

[Mabrook]

Thank you Karmov, The reason that push me to open like this thread and ask like this question because I have website I do not know if I am doing well or not, this site of type directory site and have been up for about 1.5 year, for this time -1.5 year- I just receive 500(300 of this 500 from different search engines) visitors per day, this site has more than 30,000 dynamic pages, along 1.5 year google has indexed just 3000 pages.
I did not do any marketing for this site along 1.5,
So I do not know If my site doing well or not!

Kind Regards.

[webdiversity]

Hi Mabrook,

Success can be such a subjective thing.

In some instances getting success can cause the downfall of your site, so set your stall out on the basis of what would make you happy.

If you ranked #1 on Google or Yahoo for a single word keyword then that traffic and enquiry level could cause your hosting company to shut your site down, the bandwidth would be ridiculously expensive and your customer services/e-mail would be stretched to breaking point.