P1t’s reach continues to lag behind previous year: 2016 2nd Quarter Analytics

The longitudinal comparison of the previous year’s website visitation performance with the most recent quarterly data provides a snapshot of the overall reach of the project, as well the performance of the most visited micro-entrepreneurs. Additionally, the report includes data about the reach of the project’s scholarship to the general public through select social media tools – e.g., this web blog. Some significant changes in offer and marketing are tracked and have shaped the changes in the performance of the website; moving the entrepreneurs to the new website format has greatly reduced the number of offers presented. P1T is moving the site offers from the old site to the new offerings in a systematic way to insure consistency and to keep the offers up-to-date.

Here is the most recent report, P1T Dashboard Analytics Report for 2^nd Quarter of 2016 (see inset below). The report for the 3^rd Quarter 2016 will be appearing in an October posting on this blog.

This report revealed that new visitation to the new www.peoplefirsttourism.com web marketplace has continued to significantly decrease over the new visits for 2015 2^nd Quarter (-25%). The returned visitors to the site have also decreased (-17%). However, the new visits to the site made up 77% of visits, indicating that the site is generating searches for experiences. The visits to the site during April peaked mid-month due to a direct marketing effort for a Fork-to-Farm event offer. In addition, a new event campaign rolled out which included contacting previous followers and friends to the site. The majority of visitors were from the USA, and they arrived at the P1T website through links with partners such as visitraleigh.com and centroraleigh.com. Other important sources of visitors are the websites of partner organizations like NC State University and county-level tourism and visitors’ bureaus.  These findigns confirm the importance of co-marketing partnerships fostered by P1t Lab and P1t Inc.  The report also features the ten most visited network locations of micro-entrepreneurs, which now includes farm experiences generated and advertised through the new Fork2Farmer project pursued in collaboration with NC Cooperative Extension Local Food program. The social media statistics are also indicating that Facebook and Twitter are producing impressive awareness of People-First Tourism experiences.

While the primary purpose of these reports is to enable data-driven business decisions through discussions with empowerment agents and micro-entrepreneurs, we also use these reports to ensure transparency in our efforts to drive academic discussions and research on micro-entrepreneurial business analytics. Therefore, we invite the public and the academic community to comment and to advise us on ways to improve this aspect of the People-First Tourism project.

Gene Brothers, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Equitable and Sustainable Tourism

NC State University