Games Industry Visitor Stats (My Portfolio)
polycounter lvl 14
I have been using Google Analytics on my portfolio site for the last 6 weeks, during which time I have been applying to game companies and active on several game art forums. I've had almost 500 visitors, which is a pretty solid sample size, and I thought that posting some of these stats would give people a good idea of what they can expect in terms of visitor computer specs and habits on a portfolio site so they can design their sites accordingly.
This is my portfolio: http://www.konradbeerbaum.com
Sample Size:
647 visits, 481 unique visitors over 6 weeks.
Language:
86% English speaking
Average time spent on the site:
1 minute 23 seconds
Most popular browsers:
Firefox: 64.91%
Chrome: 17.31%
Internet Explorer: 9.43%
Most popular screen resolutions:
1680x1050: 26.58%
1920x1200: 18.55%
1280x1024: 15.92%
% of screen resolutions >= horizontal 1280:
96%
Traffic Sources:
Polycount: 43.89%
Game-Artist.net: 21.95%
CGTalk: 15.30%
Direct (most likely direct links sent to employers): 10.82%
Behaviors:
- 30% of visitors visited the resume page.
- Less than 6% of visitors looked at wireframes & textures for the most popular piece, and every other piece was 3-4%.
Hopefully this information is helpful to people who are designing their portfolio sites.
I think the most important information is the screen resolutions, it shows that most people use big screens, but that enough people use 1280x1024 that it is a good idea to design for that as the minimum resolution.
It was also surprising that so few people clicked through to view wireframes and textures. This could be a due to a variety of reasons:
- My site design shows all renders on the front page at full size, so clicks aren't required to view work.
- The link may not be obvious to everyone.
- Most people just don't care about anything except the renders
While the average time spent on the site was a minute and a half, the individual number varied wildly, from 10 seconds to 8 minutes. Among direct traffic (most likely employers), the average tended to be higher, at over 2 and a half minutes.
This information can be very useful in designing your site, and I would encourage everyone in incorporate stat tracking into their website. For example, I was considering limiting front page renders to a single view, and having more angles behind a link, but looking at the 6% click through rate, that doesn't seem like a good idea since no one will ever see them.
Likewise, if you have images behind thumbnails, and you see that 90% of people look at 3 pieces, and no one looks at anything else, you know that you should probably consolidate your portfolio and start cutting stuff.
If there are any other stats or information you'd like to know, just let me know.
P.S. I put this in this forum section because this is where all the portfolios get posted, but if the admins think it doesn't belong here feel free to move it.
This is my portfolio: http://www.konradbeerbaum.com
Sample Size:
647 visits, 481 unique visitors over 6 weeks.
Language:
86% English speaking
Average time spent on the site:
1 minute 23 seconds
Most popular browsers:
Firefox: 64.91%
Chrome: 17.31%
Internet Explorer: 9.43%
Most popular screen resolutions:
1680x1050: 26.58%
1920x1200: 18.55%
1280x1024: 15.92%
% of screen resolutions >= horizontal 1280:
96%
Traffic Sources:
Polycount: 43.89%
Game-Artist.net: 21.95%
CGTalk: 15.30%
Direct (most likely direct links sent to employers): 10.82%
Behaviors:
- 30% of visitors visited the resume page.
- Less than 6% of visitors looked at wireframes & textures for the most popular piece, and every other piece was 3-4%.
Hopefully this information is helpful to people who are designing their portfolio sites.
I think the most important information is the screen resolutions, it shows that most people use big screens, but that enough people use 1280x1024 that it is a good idea to design for that as the minimum resolution.
It was also surprising that so few people clicked through to view wireframes and textures. This could be a due to a variety of reasons:
- My site design shows all renders on the front page at full size, so clicks aren't required to view work.
- The link may not be obvious to everyone.
- Most people just don't care about anything except the renders
While the average time spent on the site was a minute and a half, the individual number varied wildly, from 10 seconds to 8 minutes. Among direct traffic (most likely employers), the average tended to be higher, at over 2 and a half minutes.
This information can be very useful in designing your site, and I would encourage everyone in incorporate stat tracking into their website. For example, I was considering limiting front page renders to a single view, and having more angles behind a link, but looking at the 6% click through rate, that doesn't seem like a good idea since no one will ever see them.
Likewise, if you have images behind thumbnails, and you see that 90% of people look at 3 pieces, and no one looks at anything else, you know that you should probably consolidate your portfolio and start cutting stuff.
If there are any other stats or information you'd like to know, just let me know.
P.S. I put this in this forum section because this is where all the portfolios get posted, but if the admins think it doesn't belong here feel free to move it.
Replies
fantastic work
Thanks for taking the time to post this
that's effin' awesome!
work is solid man. no crit really except that the site layout in general is just a little hard on the eyes with the patterns, gradients, and bubbly font all clashing against each other. guess i'm just a fan of solid colors for this sort of thing.
i prefer the cpanel of my site over analytics as it provides some info that analytics just doesn't... the one thing that analytics has over it though is the map overlay with the hot spots... that is just plain cool.
People not clicking on the wireframes might be because it's tough to see there are wireframes for your model. Like I read your statistics first and then went to your site and had to look for where to find the link for wireframes. I know you wrote it in words, but your artwork is overpowering the words (which is a good thing, but also not what you want).
I say break your site into links to your work so that you just throw all images in there without links to specific parts. Like you have a gallery page and the person clicks what they want to see and then it send them to that page and then you put EVERYTHING on the page. Or setup your site like Paul Pepera http://www.peperaart.com/ where is just throws it all out there. If it's interesting enough, people will look at all of it. Links keep it neater, but like you said less than two minutes being viewer and just show it all on one page may be the best way to go in terms of portfolio sites.
or just being stupidly awesome.
Thanks for the feedback, you're right, I toned down the patterns a bit.
Also, you could always handout 'custom' links to potential employers, ie yoursite.com/companyname which just re-directs to your home page. This way, Google will track that link for you and you'll know exactly how many people from company X viewed your site.
Thanks for the stats.
That custom link idea is an interesting concept, might be a bit transparent though, and I don't know if it's really that important in the big picture.
I'm interested in google analytics now
does google analytic cost a lot or is it free?
Nope its free. All it takes is to create a google account (or use your gmail one), and then insert a block of code they give you in each page that you want to track. Thats it!
Statcounter is another good one that offers similar features.
Brad: I've had a good amount of contact from interested companies so far, done some interviews and art tests but haven't found a good fit for both sides yet. I'm in a solid position financially so I'm taking my time and making sure I find a company I want to work at. In the meantime I'm working on the cool stuff that I've always wanted to do, and practicing the high poly stuff I didn't get to do much at my last job
<- Matt from Netdevil = )
Yeah, me too. I know the link is actually red, but it could be placed better. Maybe post small thumbails for the wireframes and texture sheets below the final render, like two squares with a side half the final render's width.
Also, I don't know if I'm the only one bothered by this but...get rid of Comic Sans, there are hundreds of free better looking fonts out there you could use on the images and Verdana or even Arial get the job done just fine as far as the standard fonts go.
All in all, nice portfolio man, I love that flakk cannon! :thumbup:
and than take a close second look to actually see the red link on each picture.
I'd put it straight under each image and make it bold white text, probably - red gets lost in your current page layout.
Interesting charts too.
Its going great. I have a less active role right now due out real life limitations, but there is a new release coming out really soon, and its looking great.
Yea it's comic sans. Kinda cliche I know, but it seemed to fit and I liked it better than the font I had before.
Thanks for all the feedback. I'm thinking I'll probably move the wireframe link to the bottom of the image, because people don't think to look for it until they are done looking at the render.
If I were you I'd rethink the whole site architecture. While it's good to have something eye-catching right on the homepage you don't have to display everything on a single page. One thing you could do is have large "thumbnails" of your final renders as links to pages dedicated to that specific piece, where you could then show a final render, a wireframe shot and even a texture sheet in a row without making it look cluttered. An example of this is Anthony Vaccaro's portfolio (which I probably found here in polycount but forgot his usename).
If I had to guess I'd say that having everything on one long page is the real problem here. It makes the pieces at the far bottom feel less important, almost as if they were hidden for some reason.