Table of Contents
- Unique Users
- Traffic Peak
- Most Viewed Pages
- Advertising
- Operating Costs
- Regional and Source Traffic
- Device Type
- Traffic Graphs
- Percentage of Votes
Unique Users
Between 1,100 and 3,048 people viewed the site from Aug 9th to Nov 7th 2023. The low end is taken from google analytics which does not include browsers blocking cookies. The high end is taken from awStats, scraping log files and includes crawler bots. Our estimate for unique viewers is 1,600.
Google analytics reported 20.2% of users being ‘returning users’ with 79.8% of users being ‘new users’. This suggests most people viewed the site only once before the election.
Traffic Peak
Traffic peaked from November 5th to November 7th, as shown in the graph below. This behavior is expected and matches 2023.
Most Viewed Pages
This shows the traffic data tracked from Google Analytics. This image does not track the full 90 day study, but is relevant for showing the pages with the most views. One key metric from this image is the “Average engagement time”.
Advertising
Our advertising this year was focused on print ads and facebook advertising. Our Glastonbury Life Ad was circulated to 12,000 households.
Our meta ads were seen 30,396 times, reaching 6,097 unique viewers. Of those, 348 people clicked the ad, visiting the site.
Operating Costs
The total costs to operate GlastonburyVoter in 2023 were $1,360.30. The breakdown of costs is shown below.
| Item | Cost |
| Website Hosting Fees | $257.10 |
| Facebook (Meta) Advertising | $600.10 |
| Glastonbury Life Ads | $297 |
| Glastonbury Citizen Ad | $206 |
Regional and Source Traffic
The following image shows regional traffic and the source of traffic. Unlike 2022, there were few views from Russia.
Most users googled “Glastonbury voter” to find the site. The next highest hits were users typing the URL directly or scanning a QR code, followed by people clicking on social media ads.
Device Type
61.4% of users accessed the site using mobile devices and 35% of users accessed the site using desktop computers. Only 3.5% of users accessed the site using tablets.
Traffic Graphs
- Data Collection Method: Google Analytics uses JavaScript tracking and cookies to follow user behavior, whereas AWStats analyzes server log files. Users with JavaScript disabled, or those using ad blockers, will not be tracked by Google Analytics but will appear in AWStats.
- Bots and Web Crawlers: AWStats often includes bots and web crawlers in its visitor counts, while Google Analytics attempts to filter out known bots and spiders from its reporting. This can significantly inflate AWStats numbers.
- Unique Visitor Definition: The criteria for defining a “unique visitor” may differ between the two services. AWStats may count a user as unique more than once if they visit after a certain time period or if their IP address changes.
Percentage of Votes
The following graph shows the percentage of votes in municipal elections from 2005 to 2023. In 2017, the Republicans lost the majority. In 2017 and 2019 the Democrats held 5 seats on the town council, but in 2021 they took 6 seats with fewer votes. In 2023 the trend spiked the other way with Democrats getting 56.13% of the vote. You can view all historical municipal voting data here.
