Website traffic review of the year
Posted by Huw,
At the end of the year I like to delve into Google Analytics and share the figures with you.
Google turned off the previous version of analytics in the summer and, unfortunately, the new GA4 is not nearly as useful or insightful for webmasters as GA3. Nevertheless, I have been able to gather comparable figures.
2023 has been another record-breaking year for Brickset with more people than ever visiting the site. Our database continues to be an invaluable resource for millions, and our reviews and editorial content has attracted thousands of new readers. Additionally, LEGO continues to draw in new customers with a wide range of products, so the company's success has no doubt had a knock-on effect on us.
The headlines are:
- Number of visitors up by 21% to a record high of 11.7 million, page views up 4.5% to 97.2 million
- Social media followers up by around 7% to 176,000
- 30,384 new members joined in 2023 (2022: 33,306)
- 98,492 members logged in during 2023 (2022: 96,962)
- 3,879 members posted 71,590 comments on our home page articles, significantly more than last year (2022: 4,300/63,500)
- 344 members contributed 1,013 user reviews (2022: 363/1,124)
Website traffic
Here's how this year compares with the previous six. Data was taken on the 23rd December, and even though we've just had a 24-hour outage, all the main metrics are higher than in any other year.
| 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Page views | 97,274,213 | 93,042,935 | 92,767,612 | 95,294,684 | 81,046,193 | 84,910,676 | 92,611,909 |
| Visits | 30,179,918 | 26,633,879 | 26,247,296 | 26,156,168 | 22,775,321 | 23,334,774 | 25,174,751 |
| Visitors | 11,757,182 | 9,686,325 | 8,659,361 | 8,287,450 | 6,781,522 | 6,446,014 | 7,268,174 |
97 million page views over the year equates to an average of abut 8 million a month, 260,000 pages a day, and 3 page views per second.
As you can see in the graph below we experienced an increase in traffic during the pandemic, and it's encouraging to see that it has not dropped now that it is over. It would appear that people who discovered Brickset during that period continue to use the site.
The number of page views has almost reached 2016 levels and has surpassed that in the pandemic. The drop-off between 2017 and 2020 was caused by having to show adverts to non-logged-in casual users, which became necessary then due to changes to the affiliate payment structures of our main sources of revenue at the time.
This year's traffic
Traffic levels fluctuate with the seasons, as you'd expect for a site about an indoor hobby but, like last year, we did not see as much of a dip during the Northern Hemisphere summer as we have in the past, and that's possibly because there's a continuous stream of product releases throughout the year.
The spikes on the graph, at the start of May and December correspond with information about the summer and January releases being published.
Member numbers
Around 30,000 people joined the site this year, which is slightly fewer than in 2022.
Of those that joined last year, 13,200 continued to use the site this year, and overall, about 98,000 members logged in during the year.
265,000 people have recorded their collection on the site, although clearly not all of them keep it up-to-date. The database table that holds owned and wanted information contains 47,300,000 rows of data.
Social media
Our social media followers have increased again this year: Facebook up to 47,000 (2022: 44,000), Twitter up to 52,900 (2022: 48,900), Threads 8,200, and Instagram up to 78,000 (2022: 72,000), an overall increase of about 7%.
Our Facebook Brickset members group now has 16,900 members.
Overall, then, it's been another good year for Brickset, with the numbers all going in the right direction.
Thank you all for visiting and making the site the success it is. I hope we can continue to meet your LEGO information needs and if you have any suggestions as to what you'd like us to do differently, we are always open to hearing them, either in the comments below or via our suggestions page.
Belated Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
208 likes
36 comments on this article
Excellent work Brickset Team!
Congratulations Brickset! I check this site religiously every day, it's become a big part of my life. Thank you for the great work all year long!
I imagine next year will be a good year too if Animal Crossing is as big as the game series.
Thanks for another brilliantly useful year, Brickset Folk!
Can you extract data from the database regarding what were the most-viewed and most-added-to-collections sets?
Appreciate it, Huw. The transparency about numbers like this is a rare thing, but is super interesting to see when it is of interest at all.
That, and it's good to see the long term health of the site, given the value of resources like your database.
@bananaworld : I know they can do the most-viewed, that's where the data for the What's Hot this Week feature comes from. I'm sure the most-added-to-collections could be done, which could make another interesting feature.
Great to see those stats and long may they continue in the upwards direction
Nicely done! This year, I've been using an RSS reader app. Do views count only when I click through to view the article on the site, or does it know if I have a post marked as read?
Congratulations on another great year! I, too, check the site daily on my phone - it’s my default webpage when I have a minute (or even seconds) to spare, or when I’m just enjoying my coffee (like now).
May the New Year continue to bring you good fortune! Thanks for all you do!
Congratulations on your continued success. Absolutely an integral part of the LEGO community.
The drop to the bottom in the last graph when the site went offline is funny to see.
Greetings, Programs!
@Norikins: It's always good to see the humor an a traumatizing event.
I wonder what proportion of the 71,590 comments were left by the top 10 posters. I’m not thinking of anyone in particular, honest! :~P
Thank-you Huw and gang for another great year, the work you do is much appreciated. The ability to record personal collections, including data in the ACM, is a great help and comfort. Even though I keep an overly detailed spreadsheet that I email to myself regularly, it's nice to know that if something happens, the information is just a click away :)
Hope you are all enjoying a wonderful holiday period with family, friends and lots of yummy food!
RIP the forum though. Discord isn't really a substitute unfortunately. Despite that, thanks for all the work that goes into keeping this site the excellent resource for information on sets and parts, and the source of news and reviews it continues to be.
@bananaworld said:
"
Thanks for another brilliantly useful year, Brickset Folk!
Can you extract data from the database regarding what were the most-viewed and most-added-to-collections sets?"
We only keep a months' worth of data for most viewed in the database, for compiling the weekly chart.
In theory it should be possible to get it from GA4 but it's now geared more towards marketers than techies so it's hard to get anything useful out of it.
Well done, Brickset!
I check your website at least twice a day, so it's become an important part of my life. Thank you for all your interesting and entertaining work.
Congrats.
Brickset to me is still one of the best websites ever, and certainly the one I use the most.
And that's in spite of the fact that I wanted to cut down on the time I spend with bricks and everything associated with them, but in light of the bad things that happened to me this year I needed something to take my mind off things more than ever.
I remember having an account years ago but needing to make a new one after being unable to log in to said account. It was a newly released review of 75267 (which thus reignited my passion for Lego) that spurned me to dig up my childhood collection and once again track what I had in my possession (as well as to add many many many more old and new sets that were yet to come). Since then I've almost always had the front page opened as the first tab in my browser window.
Keep up the great work y'all, and I look forward to many more years of Lego browsing, news, reviews, and collection analysis!
Still one of my favourite websites that I like to visit. (Except December when it’s spammed with advent calendar reviews) ;)
Many thanks for these interesting statistics Huw! Can you also share growth figures of the total / average amount and value of sets we own collectively (also keeping in mind possible growth after Christmas festivities :) Keep uw the good work!
And some widescreen improvements to boot. Hell of a year, thanks for all that you do to keep this site up and running!
Good work all - happy new year!
@Reventon said:
"Still one of my favourite websites that I like to visit. (Except December when it’s spammed with advent calendar reviews) ;)"
I recall reading that it is possible to turn them off ;)
@lordofthedreams9 said:
" @Reventon said:
"Still one of my favourite websites that I like to visit. (Except December when it’s spammed with advent calendar reviews) ;)"
I recall reading that it is possible to turn them off ;)"
Can you? That would be good. I’ll have to look into it for next year.
@Reventon: Go to your account, then click on "Edit your profile." Then click on "News category preferences." Then deselect "Advent countdown." Then click on "Save."
Congratulations, it is well deserved !
BS is so useful that if it didn't exist, it would have to be invented. Lego owes BS a great debt. Without BS, I surely wouldn't be much of a Lego fan.
what is the server specs you use to support 100 million views per year?
Congrats Huw, nice to see numbers go up :)
@StyleCounselor said:
"BS is so useful that if it didn't exist, it would have to be invented. Lego owes BS a great debt. Without BS, I surely wouldn't be much of a Lego fan."
I wonder if there would be some publicity for the Brickset website inside the Lego sets if there would be an explosion of memberships. I am on the site most days and I assume that most people interested in the hobby are already a member but surely there must be tons of people just not aware of this brilliant site.
@HOBBES said:
" @StyleCounselor said:
"BS is so useful that if it didn't exist, it would have to be invented. Lego owes BS a great debt. Without BS, I surely wouldn't be much of a Lego fan."
I wonder if there would be some publicity for the Brickset website inside the Lego sets if there would be an explosion of memberships. I am on the site most days and I assume that most people interested in the hobby are already a member but surely there must be tons of people just not aware of this brilliant site. "
Replying to my own comment (sorry)
@Huw
This might be something that should be explored. I have seen numerous times on this site people saying: "I was not planning on buying this but after the review I will do". So by Lego making sure their customers know of your site, they may be able to get more sales. My 2 cents. You should be able to negotiate some sort of free publicity as it would be synergistically beneficial for both Lego and Brickset.
@StyleCounselor said:
"BS is so useful that if it didn't exist, it would have to be invented. Lego owes BS a great debt. Without BS, I surely wouldn't be much of a Lego fan."
That sounds like a load of BS to me.
:)
@Andrusi said:
" @StyleCounselor said:
"BS is so useful that if it didn't exist, it would have to be invented. Lego owes BS a great debt. Without BS, I surely wouldn't be much of a Lego fan."
That sounds like a load of BS to me.
:)"
No doubt.
@StyleCounselor said:
"BS is so useful that if it didn't exist, it would have to be invented. Lego owes BS a great debt. Without BS, I surely wouldn't be much of a Lego fan."
Which is why I always use the affiliate links to Lego.com when I order sets; to make sure Brickset gets its cut.