Success of 944 Cup

In the beginning of 2002, my dad and I (mostly my dad) set out to create a racing for the Porsche 944. At the time, the 944 was the stepchild of the Porsche Club of America and we wanted a place where they could race, be competitive in their own class and it be relatively cheap. With the help of NASA, a then-fledgling sanctioning body, the 944 Cup was born.

We just finished our sixth season and along with that, comes the entry totals for the year. The 944 Cup has been the leading race series in NASA's Mid-Atlantic chapter for a few years running, so that in itself is a serious accomplishment. It's been #1 facing the likes of Honda-Challenge and Spec Miata, which are relative heavyweights when it comes to popular racing, so that's kinda a big deal.

That said, what's tooting your horn without some numbers? Included below are the entries for the various chapters that host the 944 Cup over the last four years. It's really amazing to me that a series dedicated to a 20 year old stepchild of Porsche can be this popular. If anything, I think it's a testiment to what my dad has accomplished. He is the National Director and, aside from relying on me for web/print media and an occational opinion on the rules, is the man who makes EVERYTHING happen.


So what do I have to offer? Well, I can't say I'm the PR man that my dad is, but I am the designer and webmaster for the main 44 Cup website. The site averages just over 11k page views a month and the forums average ~20k a month. Now it's never going to compete with the likes of any major website but considering they're sites created in free time around a Series created in our free time, it's an accomplishment. To put that in perspective, this site only gets about 350 page views a month. Eeek.

Anyway, included below are some web metrics I found interesting. I'm somewhat of a metrics dork (it's my job afterall) so you may not find them that interesting. If this is your thing, awesome... feel free to IM me and discuss it. If not, well... I'm sad for you 'cause metrics are neat. Here's what I found worthwhile from the month of October.

• Remember, 11k page views a month
• Monday is our most popular day and leads Tuesday at #2 by 17%
• 6pm is our most popular hour
• 89% of our visits are from Windows, 6% from Mac
• Browser wars? 60% from IE and a surprising 24% from Netscape. Firefox is 10%, which seems on par with the industry.
• 73% of our traffic is direct navigation with 8% from search engines. Google has a 4-1 lead on the next highest search, Yahoo.
• We got 80 hits from the 944 Cup link I added to Wikipedia's Porsche 944 entry.
• "944 Cup" garners one third of our search term traffic but we do we get 5% from "944 racing". As these are the people who aren't necessarily looking for us, those are the ones that really matter.
• An estimated 67% added us to their favorites. I have no idea how this metric is calculated or if it's even remotely accurate... but it's impressive.

So that's it folks. That's what my dad and I have combined to add to society. It's not the cure for cancer but it definitely helps people spend their free time in an enjoyable way. Admit it, you're jealous.

P.S. - Happy Halloween!