When we started Backstage, the mandate was to “lift the covers on what goes on behind the curtain of horology”. I want to do just that in this post by highlighting recent web statistics from the new Marvin web site. Most companies like to hold these figures very close to the vest, as if they were some sort of state secret. I don’t see why, given the fact these numbers really belong to you, the visitors and fans, since you are directly responsible for them at the end of the day. Besides, the stats are looking surprisingly good at this stage so I want to put them in perspective as well.

We released the new Marvin website on January 10, 2010. The following Google Analytics stats are effective February 14, 2010:

Visits:  9,096
Page views: 96,385
Pages/visit: 10.60
Bounce rate: 28%
Avg time on site: 4:23 minutes
New visits: 66.63%

Basically, we managed to get around 100,000 page views in 4 weeks but more interestingly, the bounce rate is really low, pages per visit is inching on 11 (which is awesome), and the average time on site of over 4 minutes is really high. This means people are engaging with the site and finding interesting content that warrants their spending precious time on the site. I don’t know about you, but I don’t spend over 30 seconds on too many websites. In other words, we’re sticky. And as there was no conventional advertising campaign behind it, a lot of this traffic is due to cross-pollination and word of mouth.

Now to put this into perspective, Marvin’s original website drew on average 3,500 visitors per month with an 85% bounce rate as measured over 24 months. This isn’t incremental progress we’re looking at here, but a genuine “New Times, New Codes” approach to online presence. Clearly the trick will be to maintain this very dynamic growth. This is only a month’s worth of statistics. But it sure looks encouraging from where I stand.

If you’ve followed me this far, here are a couple more interesting tidbits. Which page has the highest average time spent? The one about appraising your classic Marvin! Highest page views? The collections (by a long shot) with men’s mechanicals leading the way (no surprise there).

Top five countries most interested in the Marvin site (in order): Switzerland, USA, Japan, UK and France. The overwhelming majority of Switzerland hits are from Zurich. If you break out US visits, the two major clusters are California and New York followed by Florida and Texas. In Japan, it’s all about Tokyo and in France, Paris takes the lead.

Most used mobile device to hit our mobile site? iPhone by a wide margin (Android is in 4th place).

And just think: we’re only getting started