By Will Portman, ’10, Editor-in-Chief
Since scrollonline.net’s launch on Sept. 15, 1,834 different computers have visited the site 5,492 times, logging a total of 27,081 individual page views. This data, collected by the web analytics service Google Analytics over a seven-week period from Sept. 15 through Nov. 3, represents a major increase in readership for The Scroll.
Since Sept. 15, the weekly average has been 785 visits and 3,869 page views. A visit is defined as a period of interaction between a computer and a website, ending when the web browser is closed or the user has been inactive on the site for 30 minutes. A page view is an instance of a page being loaded by a web browser. The homepage, as well as individual articles, are considered pages.
Last year, The Scroll published eight paper issues of 8 to 12 pages each over the course of the school year. One issue was published every five to seven weeks. Eight hundred copies of each issue were printed, but only 400 to 500 copies of each issue were distributed, many of which went unread. The average number of visits to the website over one week this year is greater than the total number of issues distributed over a given two-month period last year.
“We know that more kids are reading it online. It’s great fun to see their comments on the site,” said Mrs. Sarah Beyreis, The Scroll‘s faculty adviser. As of Nov. 3, a total of 86 comments from Scroll readers had been published.
“Our next challenge is to get parents who used to pick up a copy as they walked out the door to visit the site on a regular basis,” said Mrs. Beyreis. The Scroll‘s staff is exploring the possibility of a biweekly or monthly e-mail newsletter to parents, similar to the weekly Scroll e-mails students and faculty have been receiving recently, in order to encourage them to visit the site.
In addition to increased readership, The Scroll has been producing more copy this year, with a larger staff and no physical limitations on the amount of content that can be printed.
“I think we’ve got more copy,” said Mrs. Beyreis, “because we aren’t squeezing for ad space.”
“There’s been this great outpouring of student energy,” said Mrs. Beyreis. “I feared that shifting online might kill [The Scroll]. But now it’s clear to me that this is the new medium. The staff is able to imagine the website in a way that they weren’t able to imagine a physical paper. Kids read online.”
As of November, 3 132 people had become fans of The Scroll on Facebook, and The Scroll‘s YouTube account had registered over 1,000 views.