SBS Zela website traffic revealed

Yesterday, SBS managing director Michael Ebeid told a Senate estimates committee that Zela had been shut down because it wasn’t getting any traffic.

Over the space of a bare 8 months Zela averaged 75,000 page views per month with a continuous upward trend.

I challenge Mr. Ebeid that ‘no one’ was reading the site and the implication that ‘no one’ is interested in women’s sport.

January 2016

I built the Zela homepage and began uploading content on January 12 and I began promoting the site around January 22.

• Sessions 9,841
• Users 8,479
• Pageviews 16,179

February 2016

• Sessions 27,599
• Users 22,782
• Pageviews 41,112

March 2016

• Sessions 34,387
• Users 27,892
• Pageviews 49,668

April 2016

• Sessions 51,898
• Users 42,981
• Pageviews 65,067

May 2016

• Sessions 111,879
• Users 94,435
• Pageviews 138,473

June 2016

• Sessions 60,656
• Users 49,129
• Pageviews 79,775

July 2016

• Sessions 59,144
• Users 49,743
• Pageviews 77,147

August 2016

2 days before the start of the Olympics, I was informed my contract would end at the end of the month and no more resources would be put into the site. We continued to publish already commissioned work but the wide-down had begun and an opportunity was missed to leverage the Olympics and Paralympics to grow our audience.

• Sessions 70,909
• Users 62,755
• Pageviews 93,135

September 2016

Traffic drops off to effectively zero after I leave SBS and announce the closure of Zela on Facebook.

• Sessions 18,104
• Users 16,129
• Pageviews 24,727

Zela total traffic January – September 2016

• Sessions 451,559
• Users 349,047
• Pageviews 568,729

[Related: SBS told lies about Zela. Here’s some truth and clarification]