On Turning Two

Yes, the vélovoice blog is two years old! And thanks to all of you who read and comment and share, it's been a very good year indeed.

I don’t care all that much about stats – I care far more about interaction, conversations, engagement. Nonetheless, it’s gratifying to see that pageviews the past year were double what they were the first year, with most visitors hanging around to read more than one page each time they drop by. The split between brand new first time readers and returning ones has shifted slightly from 70/30 to 65/35, which suggests more “retention”, in which case I must be doing something right! The British audience has dropped from 50% to 40% while the American audience has grown from 20% to 30%, with the remaining 30% coming from all over the world (Germany, Canada, Australia, France, Singapore, Japan, Netherlands and Spain filling out the rest of the Top 10).

As ever, I am always thinking about ways to reassure people who visit vélovoice for the first time that they are “in the right place”, i.e. that they will find the information they were looking for and hopefully other things of interest as well. With that in mind, I find it illuminating to see what Google search phrases lead people to this blog. Other than searches on the word “velovoice” (gratifying in itself!), more visitors arrive here for the first time having asked Google for information about the Ortlieb Zip City bag, the Brooks Swallow saddle, the Trakke Bairn bag or the Carradice Stockport bag for the S-type Brompton bicycle. Why? I think because there is so little customer-driven information out there about those products. Manufacturer advertising and press releases can only go so far. People want to know “what is X really like to use?”, if at all possible, before committing to purchase. I hope what I’ve written about those four products, both the good and the bad, is helpful.

In addition to providing useful information, I hope to make readers feel comfortable with the range of topics covered by the blog and with my writing style. On an individual level, I only know if I’m succeeding at making you “feel at home” when you feel inspired to leave a comment now and then! So I’d far rather have one obscure article trigger 30 comments – with visitors not only responding to the article but to each other’s thoughts as well – than write a popular review with thousands of hits and not one single comment.

With product reviews being important and popular, it’s perhaps not surprising that they feature in the Top 10 most visited posts on this blog. But the Top 10 most popular posts contain some surprises too! In particular, the sale of my Pacer and the demise of Swoopy the Puch Emerald attracted a lot of attention. I know that both posts were widely shared on social media but it was certainly surprising to see them re-tweeted to a nearly “Seven Degrees of Separation” level!

In addition to the bag reviews and the stories of two bikes that left my care, write-ups about bicycle shows continue to attract a lot of readers, in some cases many months, even years, after the event.

So which of the top stories attract the most responses from readers?  Here are the Top 10 posts listed according to total pageviews, with a note of how many comments they got. 

Entry	Pageviews
Preview: CARRADICE STOCKPORT CITY FOLDER - new lug... 8 Apr 2013, 7 comments	4145
REPORT: Bespoked The UK Handmade Bike Show 17 Apr 2014	3734
** NOW SOLD** My beloved Surly Pacer road bike 14 Apr 2014	1762
Puch Princess Reborn: Sacrilege? Or Best Of Both ... 29 Nov 2014, 37 comments	1233
The Last Goodbye 9 Aug 2014	979
Review: TIMBUK2 CLASSIC MESSENGER XS (Custom) 11 Mar 2013	952
Review: TRAKKE BAIRN messenger bag 12 Apr 2013, 6 comments	833
Review (in 2 parts): ORTLIEB ZIP CITY S messenger ... 25 Feb 2013	748
Brooks Swallow Saddle - New Leather Top! 21 Jun 2013	639
London Bike Show 2014: Best of the Best 14 Feb 2014	577

The winner? The story of my modern re-build of my beloved Puch Princess. That post is one of three that I am most proud of writing (the other two being musings on custom bicycles: getting the build right and dealing with the reactions of others). A lot of time and thought went into Lorelei's transformation and then again into the writing of the story. And I was a little surprised when the positive comments began to trickle in and then almost “emotional” (!) as more and more of you contributed your thoughts and offered up details about your own vintage re-builds. It is wonderful to see old bikes so well loved. Thank you to all of you who shared your stories and your bicycles – and to those yet to do so.

With a view to making it easier for you to engage with the stories you like, I changed the comment facility from Google+ (which required people to log in to their Google+ account) to the standard Blogger commenting set-up, which lets you comment whether you are logged in (so your identity and/or avatar is shown) or not. Post completely anonymously if you wish! (Fellow bloggers Annie and Jean were key voices behind this change – thank you!)

Meanwhile, more of you have signed up to receive notifications by e-mail each time I publish a new post: subscriptions have gone from just two a year ago to 26 now, with six new subscribers coming on board within the first week following my switch from Feedburner to MailChimp as the newsletter provider, so that seems to have been a positive change for readers. The number of “followers” on Blogger has grown as well, from four a year ago to 10 now.

Amongst the followers and subscribers are several bloggers who are fantastic wordsmiths, and I send out a special Thank You to Mary G, Tony P, Jean, Timi and Jake for producing such high quality writing. I feel honoured that my blog is among the ones you read yourself.

One final ‘statistic’ that has surprised and amused me… 

I was advised by an experienced blogger (whose day job is in website designer and business consultancy) that, as hard as it may be to write about yourself, one of the most valuable pages on any blog is the “About Me” page. Statistically, it’s the second page new visitors click on (after reading the page they landed on from wherever they came from). It’s a blogger’s place to reassure those first-time readers that they have found a writer with whom they have something in common, who understands their viewpoint and is well-placed and motivated to write about exactly the things that reader wants to read. So – I put a lot of care and thought into writing a proper “About Me” page, replacing the rather bland “could almost be anybody” blurb that was there before.

And guess what? It’s still THIS page that is the runaway Most Visited Second Page You Read. 

So it is all about the bike!

Pedal on, dear readers and friends, pedal on.