WEEI.com, the website of the nation’s top rated sports radio station WEEI-AM Boston announced a 95% growth in unique visitors over the last 12 months to reach an all-time high for the site according to OneStat.com. The success can be attributed to improved content on the site, as well as more people consuming WEEI-AM via the internet, Blackberry and iPhone.
In January 2009, WEEI.com had 426,879 unique visitors, up from 219,559 in January 2008. In addition to the increasing number of unique visitors, overall site traffic jumped to 3.3 million Page Views during January 2009, an increase of 88% when compared with the same month one year earlier.
According to web analytics service Compete.com, users are extremely engaged at WEEI.com:
The average user’s stay on WEEI.com was more than 21 minutes during each visit to the site in the month of December 2008.
This engagement number is up an impressive 579% from December 2007.
In 2008 more than 10 million hours of live streaming audio in 2008 was consumed over 3.3 million sessions.
The average WEEI.com visitor session for Internet Radio was over 3.2 hours per visit.
WEEI.com users listened to more than 1.8 million audio OnDemand clips in 2008.
“Our goal for WEEI.com has been to take our unique, authentically local content assets to create the number one online destination for New England sports fans,” said Tim Murphy, VP/GM of WEEI.com. “We’re pleased with the increase in traffic and engagement. With our imminent plans to add even more rich content, as well as major improvements in the design and functionality of the site, I’m confident that our numbers will continue to trend upward. This is important for our great advertising partners. Digital platforms whose local content reaches deeply engaged consumers create phenomenal opportunities for effective and efficient audio and visual marketing campaigns.”
Visitors are also consuming WEEI.com content in non-traditional means, evidenced by the 4,500 unique visitors to the website’s mobile WAP site. In addition, the WEEI newsletter has 182,000 subscribers and the WEEI.com Facebook page now has over 1,900 members.
In August 2008, WEEI.com made significant upgrades to the website’s design and content by hiring two of the best-known journalists in Boston sports, WEEI.com editor-in-chief Rob Bradford and Patriots reporter Michael Felger. Since then, WEEI.com has hired over 10 contributors to the site, including former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling.
RBR/TVBR observation: Goes to show you it can be done–growing overall revenue from your website. Content-rich websites with local talent contributors is the way to go. Add a rich audio-visual media experience and the icing is on the cake. Yes, it might be easier for sports stations you might say, but music stations are certainly able to intertwine local bands, clubs, club-goers, etc to bring the pulse of the community–whatever the demo–to your site. Much of this local talent is already out there on the web–find a way to do business with them!
