Hi there,

On the 17th of this month, my company website went 'live' and we released our first title, Track Trouble.

While I appreciate the in-depth statistics that Webalizer can provide from the web-site log files, I'm not sure how to interpret some of them. For example...

The demo of Track Trouble is about 2Mb. When I look at the log file I see:

Hits (for this particular file) = 1981
KBytes = 1474270.

The question is, how can I tell how many full downloads there were? I mean, theres obviously not 1981. Also, the maximum number of non-broken downloads there could be is 1474270/2Mb = 766 (about). I suspect that the real figure is still only a fraction of this. Maybe 400 or so? How can I make an estimated guess based on these figures?

Incidentally, I've only had 3 sales so far. Is is too early to start panicing about a < 1% conversion rate? After all, it does take some people a long time to play all the way through the demo.

Thanks.

There's a good article at Shareware Gaming Mag about Downloads and Conversions. Here's the link:
http://www.sharewaregaming.com/article/news_template.php?title=Downloads%20and%20Conversions&src=numbers.ini

A conversion rate that's less than 1% is nothing to worry about in shareware, especially if you're just starting out. It's way too early to panic. Try searching the forums here for threads on conversion rates. Let me add a suggestion as well. It would be a good idea to have at least one of the following on your home page and on your games page:

a screenshot(s) or thumbnail(s)
screenshots button
screenshots link


I nearly closed the page out of impatience and I surely would have if I had surfed there not knowing that a game was actually available. You've got the "more info" link, but I think screenshots are the first thing people want to see.

Right. Thats good advice, thanks!

Thanks for the link too Addictive.

Originally posted by Duncan
The question is, how can I tell how many full downloads there were? I mean, theres obviously not 1981. Also, the maximum number of non-broken downloads there could be is 1474270/2Mb = 766 (about). I suspect that the real figure is still only a fraction of this. Maybe 400 or so? How can I make an estimated guess based on these figures?

I would bet that your estimate of 400 unique users is low. My guess is that based on your bandwidth the number of unique users that clicked on your download link would be between 850 and 1090. A simple way to check is to count the number of unique IP addresses in your log file. It will undercount people behind proxy servers (AOL users are a problem) but it will be within 10%.

Michael
FileKicker Support
support@filekicker.com
http://www.filekicker.com/