GOV.UK celebrates its first birthday on Thursday. We’ll be writing about some of the most interesting data we’ve seen this year in the run-up.
Visitors normally come to GOV.UK to get things done or find out information to help with their private or professional lives. Whilst on an upward trend, traffic patterns are fairly consistent from week to week. But when big national events take place, is there an impact on traffic?
The Wimbledon Men’s Singles Final took place on 7 July and, for the first time in years, a Briton won the final.
We compared visits to GOV.UK on Sunday, 7 July with the Sunday before and Sunday after:
Over the whole day, visits were down 25% from 30 June and down 18% on the average of the previous and next Sundays. Most of this drop was in the afternoon just before and during the match:
Over the five hours from 1:00pm to 6:00pm, visits were down 33% on the previous Sunday, with an even bigger fall in the last hour.
We also hypothesised that more people might have accessed GOV.UK by mobile or tablets on 7 July or that residents of Scotland might have been less inclined to visit GOV.UK, but that wasn’t the case.
| 30/06/2013 | 07/07/2013 | 14/07/2013 | |
| Desktop | 63.34% | 62.31% | 61.97% |
| Mobile | 21.52% | 23.52% | 23.80% |
| Table | 15.13% | 14.17% | 14.24% |
| Prop. of visits from Scotland | 6.32% | 5.95% | 5.79% |
If you’d like to see the data, download this csv file.
Follow Peter on twitter: @peterbjordan
NOTE: We originally wrote that Murray's appearance was "the first time in years a Briton was in the final". Obviously we'd all blotted out his defeat in 2012. Cheers for the correction Jill!
5 comments
Comment by Jill Rutter posted on
This isn't true.. Andy Murray was in the final last year. He lost to Federer. you need a tennis fan on your tteam
Comment by matthewsheret posted on
Good catch Jill - have updated that now. I think we'd all done our best to blot it out.
Comment by Peter Jordan posted on
i was thinking that when I wrote the post. mea culpa - we should always check the context!
Comment by Stephen Edwards posted on
Now I never thought we would see an animated gif on GOV.UK! Love it!
Comment by Andrew Robertson posted on
And even more surprising, it works on my government computer!