December 31, 2013
Thank You for a Great 2013
Filed under: — Dan Balash @ 2:58 pm

Another marching band season has come and gone in our great state. Bands across the state continue to make great strides and continue to improve year in and year out. We had a lot of great shows this year, and bands in this state continued to impress both in state and at BOA events. We are excited to see what the future holds for marching band in the state of Illinois.

Let me share some nerdy statistics with you:

  • From August 1-November 24 (what we consider our marching season), we had 40, 961 unique visits to the site, resulting in 146,188 visits and amassing 823,162 page views.  Compared to last year, the visits were up 7.9%, the unique visitors were up 8.5%, and the pageviews were down slightly by .18%.
  • From January 1, 2013-December 26, 2013: we had 54,383 unique visits to the site, resulting in 186,345 visits and amassing 997,685 page views.  It’s quite obvious that about 75% of our page views come during the marching band season.
  • Our social media is doing well.  We nearly doubled the amount of likes on our Facebook fan page this year, surpassing 1,600, and the Twitter feed continues to do well.
We can’t begin to express how thankful we are to all our members. It is because of all of you that we work so hard on this website, and continue to try and make it better.

Now, what’s next?

We’ve compiled 3 years of results from the Illinois Marching Online survey.  Thank you to all who have taken that over the years.  With your suggestions, we plan on completely overhauling the website.   You may have seen a preview of a prototype from the last offseason.  We have hopes that we can compile all of your suggestions and complaints into one cohesive pile that we can use towards building a much better website for everyone. If you see the website down in the coming months, don’t panic. We’re rebuilding to make it better for you.

As I traditionally do, I would like to thank some folks. Thank you to our sponsors, Fitzpatrick Music, HuddleTrip and Voxitatis for continuing to sponsor the site. It is much appreciated. Thank you also to all of the directors and band boosters that send us information about festivals. Thank you to the staff of the site, who keep me from going crazy with data entry and keeping up with the site. Finally, and most importantly, thank YOU for continuing to use the site. We wouldn’t be here if you guys didn’t enjoy the site. It is a great feeling when the staff is out at marching band competitions and we get recognized and complimented by staff members, directors, and even parents for what we do.

Here’s to a great 2014.

-The Illinois Marching Online staff

(full article)