1/4 of overclockers visitors visit forums

fini

fini

fini

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I was browsing through alexa.com and I thought I'd look at the figures for overclockers, which can be found here. Now, I know alexa isn't a precise science, but I was quite shocked to see that 26% of everything that goes on at overclockers.co.uk is in the forums.

The forums must be generating huge amounts of custom, but equally costing an arm and a leg in bandwidth alone!
 
The forums can't cost that much to run surely. Perhaps £500/month but in the grand scheme of things, £6000 a year isn't going to hurt them too heavily.
 
fini said:
I was browsing through alexa.com and I thought I'd look at the figures for overclockers, which can be found here. Now, I know alexa isn't a precise science, but I was quite shocked to see that 26% of everything that goes on at overclockers.co.uk is in the forums.

The forums must be generating huge amounts of custom, but equally costing an arm and a leg in bandwidth alone!
Click to expand...

Does that list individual visitors?

Otherwise the forum users would skew the stats badly (I tend to be on and off the forums constantly for example).
 
The forums may directly cost OcUK money, but indirectly they bring money in. Like there are lots of times when i would have taken my money elsewhere if it wasnt for the support ive got on these forums.
 
I'd imagine that the forums also serve as a good form of advertisment, getting the 'OcUK' name out there.
 
Werewolf said:
Does that list individual visitors?

Otherwise the forum users would skew the stats badly (I tend to be on and off the forums constantly for example).
Click to expand...
True - 25% really isn't much. Within that's there's probably an 80/20 split as well - 80% of the traffic caused by 20% of the members. Most normal people don't browse the shop all day every day.
 
it brings advertising and costs less than hiring out another tech support staff,a lot of issues and problems can be sorted here instead of that person phoning ocuk direct,a good idea for a lot of basic problems
 
BillytheImpaler said:
Spie has said on many past occasions that the forums amount to a net loss for the company.
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But how is that worked out?

Since how can he track if every members on here has bought a product in the shop? Does it cross reference every memebers here's email address to the ocuk shop accounts for reference? What if they use different email address or what if the member here walks into the ocuk shop itself. There is no way he can account for that.

I don't believe that the forum generate a net loss, it cost money to run for sure, not denying that but it also generate income, and save money in ways such as free tech support from its members, advertising, word of mouth. Can he quantify those? How much would it cost to run a 24/7 365 days tech support line? Because that is what the forum is basically. How much would it cost in advertising to generate the same amount of pubicity and word of mouth from the forum?

No way Jose.
 
If those stats are anyway near accurate, 0.005% of global internet users visit this site regularly, that's pretty damned impressive, and something to be proud of.

Net loss or not, who really cares? I'm pretty sure (or hope) Spie knows we're very grateful for this resource, and he's not naive, he knows how much custom they bring in.

@raymond - very good point about the 24/7 helpline, thats probably worth the bandwidth costs alone.
 
how does that work.....

Alexa traffic rank based on a combined measure of page views and users (reach)
Yesterday 1 wk. Avg. 3 mos. Avg. 3 mos. Change
N/A* 1,561,577 213,5745986,130 up 2,724,076

there is no chance the company i work for gets that many visits
 
That's stupid to say they make a net loss.

Of course it makes a loss, it's a cost. Stationery costs for your lovely desk is a net loss.

But the forums, they keep people coming back to the OC website, you continually post with new products and offers, and in the grand scheme of thing, it wouldn't cost THAT much... what have you got, a dedi 10mb pipe? a couple of grand a year? compare that to the business it generates.

Rubbish
 
A traffic ranking of 51,542 in the USA is also pretty damn good considering the amount of web usage there.

I think the percentage of hits between ocuk's main site and the forum would definately differ if people actually bookmarked the forum instead of the main site.

I for one had the main page bookmarked and then used the link to get into the forums.
 
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I'm also one of those people who when faced with purchasing something from OCUK, or from somewhere else for a couple quid cheaper, I get it from OCUK just because of the forums.
Now, if something is dramatically cheaper elsewhere, it's a no brainer but I'm sure there are many people who do the same thing and I would imagine those couple quid add up.
 
Theres no way the forums make a loss for the company. Every time there is a new product or special offer its posted up on here. When someone asks for a spec me a system, its nearly always listed from OCUKs parts and will be bought from the store.
The forum will bring in a huge amount of revenue, much more than the running costs.
 
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