A little late with the review for August. Took a while to recover after the sudden increase in traffic from the Gundam Wedding photos at Odaiba.
New Server
Ended up having to move the site to a new dedicated server to handle the traffic surge, which saw the site go down for a while and act very sluggish for about a week. Thanks for sticking with us during that time, and I hope the new setup is working well for everyone.
We have seen some more increases in traffic this month which is always good to see. Last month we saw a total of 29,964 unique visitors for the month, averaging 967, whereas this month that figure has increased to 64,025 unique visitors, averaging 2,065 per day.
It is good to see the returning visitor average up from 5,640 to 7,053 as well.
You can clearly see from this graph where the “Gundam Wedding factor” took off and spiked the traffic high. The Gundam Wedding photos were viewed almost 40,000 times and had about 300 Retweets. Thanks to everyone for spreading the word on Twitter, email, blogging etc.
Analysis
FireFox is moving further ahead in the preferred browser race now with 60%. I managed to fix the security problem with IE and all should be working fine now. Interesting to see Chrome moving up in numbers to 7%.
The new Feature Photo section added last month performed well with the Gundam Sunset and Gundam Wedding as well as Danny Choo in Akiba sets. Thanks to everyone for hitting the ‘digg’, ‘reddit’ and ’stumbleupon’ buttons. Much appreciated.
You can see a page with all the Feature Photo sets here.
Twitter Followers are going strong, almost at 20,000, and it is always great to get some ReTweet support. Thanks to everyone who has been tweeting with me.
Member Login
I have improved and ‘ajaxified’ the login and comment section. I have been doing a lot of testing on this and hope it now works. You can register by choosing a username and password. I will be building up a profile section so you can save your favorite posts, see all of your previous comments, follow others in the community and also make some posts yourself.
Giveaway Contests
Now we have the member login working properly, the giveaways are around the corner. I am away in Australia at the beginning of October. When I return around October 10th there will be the first giveaway. I will post details in a separate post. You will need to be a member to enter and have posted at least 3 comments. You can get started early by commenting here if you like. Let me know what sort of giveaway you would like to see in the comments section.
Upcoming
A lot of people have mentioned they would like to buy some magazines or Rilakkuma, Mameshiba products I have talked about on the site. I am still working on the best solution for this and should have something shortly.
Ideas, Comments
As always, if you have any ideas and comments for the design, layout or content for the site, let me know. Thanks to you all for another good month.
6 comments
For God’s sake!! 20k followers ^^; …i would like to retweet u but im just starting at twitter so i don’t have much followers…
The site is great right now, at least for me… if i see something make sure ill tell u…
Oh almost forgot… good luck in that trip…remember to use the camera like Rambo would use a machinegun 😛
sounds good. I’ll keep the camera on semi-automatic with the safety off. maybe for the frist giveaway I’ll throw in some Twitter followers, LOL ^_-^ thanks
RT @Shibuya246: Site Review, Aug 2009, Japan Site Review | Shibuya246 http://bt.io/F6e
Well you know that I follow you on Twitter and FaceBook, that way I can keep or the postings you do. And yes the whole affair w/Gundam, and the Gundam wedding and all the great photos you took helped raise the bar of popularity. ^_^ I use IE and have had no problems with it. Would like to try firefox but I’m using a computer that my wife won, and don’t want to mess it up.
As far as giveaways i wouldn’t mind seeing a Rilakkuma or those train station lights w the music playing. I saw a review of them and they looked cool. Have fun in Austrailia. 🙂 The only song i know from Australia is called “Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport: That song was made back in the 60’s. Also the song “I Come From The Land DownUnder”.
Definitely have to get some Rilakkuma goods thrown into the mix. Train station keyrings and music good too. Will stock up and announce giveaway when I get back from oz. Thanks 🙂
Wow, you have some serious traffic! 😀
I would love to see Rilakkuma or Hello Kitty items offered as part of the giveaway. Thank you so much!
Thanks. Hello Kitty added to the list 🙂