Website traffic and visitor satisfaction

• Number of website visits and page views
• Visitor satisfaction with the website
• Frequency of visits to the website

Statistics Canada conducts a visitor evaluation of its website regularly. The purpose of this evaluation is to ensure that the design and content of the website stay in step with visitors’ changing needs. The following information illustrates the use of the website and provides some key findings from the evaluations.

Number of website visits and page views

Since the launch of the Statistics Canada website in 1997-1998, the number of visits and the total number of pages viewed by visitors increased every year until, in 2007-2008, the traffic stabilized at more than 15 million visits and almost 100 million page views.

The increase continued in the last few years. In 2009-2010, there was more than 16 million visits and almost 116 million page views (daily averages reached 46,000 visits and nearly 317,000 page views.)

Visitor satisfaction with the website

The main focus of the 2010 website evaluation was to measure respondents’ task completion; this indicator is widely cited as the key measure of a successful website. The task completion success rate is defined as the number of visitors who find the information they were looking for.

In 2010, 65% of respondents to the website evaluation were successful in completing their task on the website. This success rate was higher (75%) for those who had visited the site six or more times in the last 6 months. This represents a significant improvement from past evaluations when a slightly different version of the question was asked. In 2004, 2005 and 2007, between 45% and 57% of respondents to the website evaluation reported finding all or most of the information they were looking for. Of those who succeeded in finding what they were looking for in 2010, 71% found it easy to complete their task.

Frequency of visits to the website

In 2010, 36% of respondents indicated that today was their “first time” visiting the site. Overall, only 38% of respondents indicated they had visited the site six or more times.

Number of respondents:
2010: 9,857   2007: 2,178   2005: 4,790   2004: 6,245   2003: 3,467  2002: 3,224   2001: 2,207   1999: 1,682