Stumble Upon

I got Stumbled last night… hard.

Work was slow at my hotel, so I was writing articles for Chris Bloczynski dot Com. Traffic at the blog was also slow for the day. Around 8:30pm, I finished the second of three articles and popped over to Google Analytics to see what was happening, and I got the surprise of my life.

In the twenty minutes I had taken to write my second article, my page views had tripled, and the number of visitors to my site had increased by almost 400%!

What the heck happened? I had posted an article to remind my general readers about my contest drawing, and somebody submitted it to Stumble Upon. In the midst of the heavy traffic to the contest article, I posted a short plug about John Chow, and that article was also Stumbled, resulting in even more traffic.

By the end of the night, my page views had reached a record high, over 600% higher than my daily average. My daily visitor count was over 1000% higher than normal. 

John Chow himself even paid a visit to see what all the fuss was about (or to figure out why the heck I was speaking his name and linking to his page… one or the other!)

So what is Stumble Upon?

My blogger friends most likely already know, but I know I have readers who may not be up to speed (love you, friends and family!) StumbleUpon.com is the best way to discover great websites, videos, photos, blogs and more. Users submit their interests to Stumble Upon, and then they are able to “channel surf” websites that match the interests they submitted.

Anatomy of a Stumble

Occasionally, users may run across an item of interest that they think other users would be interested in, so they are able to submit the article, video, or page by clicking a “thumbs up” button on the Stumble Upon toolbar that they download when signing up. The “Stumbled” item is then posted on a “Popular Items” page at the Stumble Upon website, and it may be included in the pool of potential websites to view when users browse with the Stumble Upon toolbar.

What was the result of my particular Stumble?

In my case, it was the very first time anyone had flagged one of my articles as an item of interest with ANY popular social network, so of course I was surprised at the incredible surge in traffic. Disappointingly, the conversion of new visitors to subscribers was very, very low. And although there was such an incredible number of visitors to the page regarding my contest, I only received three new entries (that I’m aware of at this point.) 

In my experience, Stumblers tend to be a little fickle. A high percentage of my visitors last night only stayed long enough to view the particular article they had come for, and didn’t spend much time clicking through and exploring the site.

In addition, hardly any of my visitors last night were users of My Blog Log. I generally can follow up when someone new has visited my site by clicking on the avatar of the Blog Log user and inviting them back or adding them to my network.

Three mistakes I may have made

• I didn’t “deep-link” in either of the articles that were submitted… that is, I didn’t link to any other articles on my site that readers may have been interested in. I generally do link around my site when I write, but my Stumble visitors last night didn’t get an opportunity to easily see any other pages besides the one they Stumbled on.
• I’m in the middle of site re-design, and I don’t have an Archive or Category widget in my sidebar. There is a Category section and a Recent Posts section in a widget on the bottom, but if Stumblers are as fickle as they seem, I may not be able to trust them to scroll all the way to the bottom to catch that. And my “Archives” page is under construction! Argh.
• At the top of my sidebar is a blurb to tell new visitors what the site is about… this is the “elevator pitch“. I was figuratively in an elevator with everyone who stopped by last night and I wasn’t able to convert them into subscribers, commentators, or contest entries. Is my writing tight enough to convince new visitors that my site is worth repeated visits? 

It could be that that’s just the way it goes… although I’d rather blame myself and learn from it than accept that it was beyond my power.

I know who you are

You submitted both of my articles, and I have a surprise to send over as a “thank you” for the learning experience. Please contact me so that I can arrange shipping.

Readers, any feedback or comments to offer?