Kristina Calfee

Intro to Web Pub

Success Factors of a Web Site
My Site: bleacherreport.com
Web Site Overview

General Site/Company Information

The site that was assigned to me was bleacherreport.com. After looking at this sit, I
noticed it has anything sports related that you could possibly want. The site includes information
from the NFL, college football, Major League Baseball, NHL, college basketball, soccer, UFC,
WWE, and the Olympics to name just a few. This site also has the material for a user to
customize their favorite teams and conferences for sports. There is also links on this site to tickets
for a certain game youre looking for. Another feature that this site offers is a link to shop for
your sporting needs. You can also find videos on this site of sport content. The idea of the site is
to reach sports fans with what they want and need. In the about sections of this site, it says the site
started in 2007, making it a newer site by 4 sports fans who were tired of the sports content on the
internet. According to the sites about section the mission in creating this site is to revolutionize
the way sport fans learn, think, and talk about their favorite teams and topics.

Competing Site
After doing some research, one competing site that I found was
yardbarker.com.Yardbarker.com offers a lot of the some content and information. The competing
site offers anything you could want sports related. Yardbarker.com takes more on opinions and
humor than giving all the facts. It also offers content about the same information when it comes to
sports. It offers content on the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, college basketball, college football, and
soccer. The site offers content such as videos and pictures and also offers the top headlines to
read. At first glance this site doesnt seem to have any advertisements.

Design & Layout Analysis

Browser Type
For this report, Im using Google Chrome. The browser that Im comparing Chrome to is
Internet Explorer. According to the book, due to the different applications developed by
companies, browsers interpret information all in a slightly different way, a web browser does this
by receiving layout and styling information from a host that displays the information on screen.
Between the 2 websites I notice a lot of these layout differences. In Google Chrome, there is the
score of the Super Bowl above the fold. In the Internet Explorer browser there is no scores at all
above the fold of the site. In Google Chrome the Toyota ad background is wider and you can see
more of it. In the Internet Explorer ad you can barely see the Toyota ad in the background. The
layout in Google Chrome had a much less width than Internet Explorer.

Monitor Resolution
The monitor resolution Ill be using for this report is the recommended resolution of
1366x768. To vary the resolution I will be changing it to 1800x600. According to the book,
monitor resolution is the number of pixels when your measure horizontally and vertically on a
monitor. There are major differences between these 2 resolutions. In the recommended resolution
the text is zoomed out and you can see the background on the page. When I changed the
resolution, everything was so much more zoomed in. You couldnt see any of the background
either. I also found the new resolution to be very hard on my eyes and crammed together. The
screenshots to show all these differences are on the next page.

Normal Resolution

Fixed Resolution

Layout

Page Elements
Bleacherreport.com has a few of the same layouts, but not that many pictured below are
the similarities. The header does a great way of displaying the most important
informatation first. The feature shows a big picture to catch your attention. The
background is clear to see. The footer is at the bottom shown jus like in the book, with
less important information.

header

background

body/content
Footer:

feature

Above the Fold

According to the book above the fold is the line where the browser window cuts off the
content. This is area seen by the user when the page loads. In bleacherreport.com the
things that are above the fold include the scores from various leagues, bleacher reports
logo, top headlines that you should read about, a place to sign up and login to the site, a
search bar, and an ad for Strawberry Red Ale. Below is a screenshot of the above the fold
for bleacherreport.com. I think all of the sites content above the fold is appropriate, it
gives the information you want to know when you first open the page. It also tells you
important headlines that might interest you right away.

Upper Left

Pictured above is the upper left of bleacherreport.com. The upper left is where the eye
tracks when pages are viewed. The eyes are supposed to go the upper left corner when the page
loads. Some key things you see in the upper left are the headlines, a few scores, an ad that really
catches your eye, and a big picture that gets your attention. I think the site does a fantastic job
using the upper left. It gives a lot of the important information that it wants its visitors to see
especially the headlines at the top. It does a good job of offering the important information first
and using a good hierarchy.

Ads
All of the ads are centered around one product. All of the ads are centered on Redds
Strawberry Ale. One of their ads is clearly above the fold and is the first ad a visitor will
see when they look at the web page. I think this site could be displaying a little too much
of their ad on their site around this product and kind of takes away what their sites
purpose is, which is to display sports so users can get all the sporting information.

Traffic Analysis

Traffic Source: Quantcast.com

My site was bleacherreport.com. According to Quantcast, the number of

unique per day was 3,908, 791, which is down 4%. For weekly unique visitors the number was
18, 810, 584, which is down by 1%. The number of monthly unique visitors was 54, 963, 800,
which is up by 19%.

To analyze all the traffic for this site, I analyzed 2 different situations. I first one I analyzed there
6 month period. There rates over the 6 month period have increased over time. July through
August were at the lowest, as the months progressed rates continued to progress. The highest that
they got was from January 5th from February 3rd where 50 million was there highest view. I
believe this is due to the NFL playoff season and Super Bowl. I next analyzed the 1 year
statistics. I noticed that there was more fluctuation in this graph. In the 1 year viewings went up
and down. The lowest was from May to August. I believe this is due to the part where there is not
a lot of sports action going on, besides maybe the NBA. Something I found that was interesting
according to the site was that this site has more page views from a mobile device browser than
from a computer browser in the United States. Other facts that I found was that Males are the
majority of visitors and most visitors are between the ages of 25 and 34. Most visitors also dont
have kids. Most of the ethnicity that visits this site is either Caucasian or African American.
People with some college, college degrees, and people attending grad school or grad school
graduates are the highest visitors. The range that mostly visits this site is 50 -150k+.

The competing site that I have chosen was yardbarker.com. The number of unique visitors per
day is 345,565, which is up 60%. The number of unique visitors per week is 1,849,483, which is
up 12%. The number of unique visitors per month is 7,191,989, which is down 4%. This site has
had huge fluctuations in a year from close to 2 million to less than 500,000. There are many

demographic similarities between the 2 sites. Males and people having no kids are popular
viewers of this site. Caucasians visit this site the most. People with college and grad school
background visit this site most often. The age of this site fluctuates from anywhere from 35 to
over 65. According to the site, yardbarker.com also has more page views from a computer
browser than from a mobile device browser in the United States.

Traffic Source: Alexa.com

The bounce rate for bleacherreport.com is 53.80%. The page view per visitor is 5.14. The daily time
on site is 4:09. The bounce rate is up 5%, while the page views per visitor is down 11.99% and daily time
on sit is down 3%.
My competing site is yardbarker.com. The bounce rare is 54.80%. The daily page view per visit is
3.10. The daily time on site is 3.38. The bounce rate is up by 1%. The daily page view per visit is down
2.82% and daily time on site is down 5%.
By comparing these numbers, both of these sites seem to have similar statistics. The fact that
bleacherrport.com had declined in page views per visitor by 11.99% seemed quite alarming. Both of these
sites seem to get quite a bit of traffic. 38,189 sites link to bleacherreport.com, while only 4,031 sites link
to yardbarker.com. As you can see, bleacherreport.com seems to get more traffic.

Media Kit/Advertiser Info Analysis

Bleacherreport.com gets 55 million unique visitors in the U.S and 72.6 million globally.
Bleachereport.com is getting a bunch of traffic from various links and search databases. Having 38,189
links to this site gives room for lots of traffic.

Traffic Conclusions

In conclusion, I was quite surprised by how much better bleacherreport.com is doing than
yardbarker.com I thought these sites were very similar and have a lot in common by my first impressions
of them. One thing that really surprised me was just the number of views between the 2 sites. I was also
surprised by the number of unique visitors. Bleacherreport.com had so much for unique and regular
visitors. I was really surprised to learn that yardbarker.com had more online viewers than those using

mobile devices. In conclusion, you can clearly tell that bleacherreport.com gets way more traffic and
could be considered a more successful website.
Popularity Analysis

Link Popularity Source: MajesticSEO.com

My site is bleacherreport.com. The number of referring domains is 132,378. Of the 10 websites it

shows for bleacherreport.com, they all different websites, which proves that there is a ton of traffic for
this site and that its very popular.
My competing site is yardbarker.com. The number of referring domains is 11,577. Of the 10 listed
they are from 10 different sites, with foxsports being on top.

Social Media Analysis

Bleacherreport.com

Yardbarker.com

Facebook Page Likes

785,00

99,021

Twitter Followers

549,000

13.5 thousand

Google Plus +1s

1,258,348

68

Blog Mentions

15,700,000

447,000

As you can see, bleacherreport.com is dominating the social media scene, compared to
yardbarker.com. I think part of the reason bleacherreport.com is dominating is because of their popularity
with social media and with mobile users. With social media stories can be shared to users friends on a
social media site. If yardbarker.com, were to try to focus on the mobile users I think they could improve
their overall performance. The fact that Google+ only has 68 followers for yardbarker.com is very poor.

Popularity Conclusions

My site is clearly more popular than yardbarker.com. I think bleacherreport.com is popular

because if offers its users reliable information, it uses great design schemes, it gives ways to users to get
involved, and also offers interactivity and also has the numbers to back it up as a successful site.

Success Conclusions
In conclusion, my site is successful. Bleacherrport is obviously the more dominate and
successful website. Yardbarker.com had their numbers go up and down so much it was
really hard to tell if they were considered successful. At times in the graph, they looked
successful, but at other times they really didnt. The fact that yardbarker.com went down
a million users in a year is a sign that the site is not giving the users what they want and
need unlike bleacherreport.com.