West Boca News grew tremendously in 2013. As you can see from the image on the right (from Google Analytics) our readers are really hyperlocal. A very large percentage are located not just in South Florida, but in Boca Raton and especially in West Boca locations like Boca Raton, Boca Del Mar, Sandalfoot Cove, and Mission Bay. Deerfield Beach, Parkland and Delray Beach also make the top 10 list of reader locations. What do our users read? Here’s the Top 5, plus some extra details:
#1: Far and away our top story for 2013 was the motorcycle accident on Glades Road. We happened to pass by the accident scene and captured compelling photos. Then noticed the Vehicle Homicide Investigation Unit vehicle and got worried.
Fortunately the motorcyclist did survive, and he now appears to be actively using his Twitter account. That one story accounted for nearly 6% of the pageviews on our site for the year, and those views was heavily concentrated on the day we published it and the next few days.
#2: The Walmart at Palmetto and 441 will reopen soon. We don’t know exactly when, or what it will be. But we know it’s coming. We have inquired and hope to find out more soon. Future articles about whatever Walmart puts in will probably be among the biggest stories for West Boca in 2014.
#3: Back in May we covered the opening of the West Boca Green Market at Olympic Heights High School. That article got more traffic in the summer. It still gets some views, but not as much since the fall started.
#4: In November we did a story about the poorly laid out school speed zone at Logger’s Run Middle School. That one caught a lot of attention the day it appeared, but tailed off quickly.
#5: In June we reported that the Beall’s store in West Boca Square (near Chili’s) was closing. That was heavily read through the summer and continues to get a lot of views. We still hear people talking about what might take its place.
Bonus: Our top category was restaurants. We write a lot of reviews of restaurants in West Boca. The second biggest category was crime stories.
Honorable mention: The second most read article was actually from 2012, Consumer Alert: Spalding Basketball System – 88461G. It was 3% of our pageviews.
And the fourth most viewed article, also from 2012, was about Hotwire Communications in Boca Falls. We guess a lot of people search for information about these and no one else has answered the questions.
