March 28, 2015
Saturday site stuff: Those who give 32
Photo-illustration — DALI KOVACEVIC
BY DEJAN KOVACEVIC
A weekly look at what’s new, what’s coming on our site …
• It’s been an unusual but also unreal week for the site, in part because we crossed 9,000 paid subscriptions at the eight-month mark but much more because of how it happened: 143 subscriptions were bought and donated to military veterans in the past two weeks alone.
They came from all over and from people of all means, from the simple one-year gifts to the equally generous individual who donated 100 of those, if you can believe that.
And those who accepted came from all over, as well, from the youngster studying on the GI Bill program to the 90-year-old World War II vet signed up by his son. My wife, Dali, who handles our graphics and our customer service and … well, all the real work … she was so moved by some of these missives that she came up with the above visual and asked me to use it here.
Thanks to those who donated, and a special thanks to those who served. We hope, wherever you are, you enjoy keeping up with your favorite Pittsburgh teams.
For anyone new to this, all active-duty members of the military get signed up for free. That’s on us, and it’s been that way since the day we went online. Anyone who’s a veteran — or who wants to donate to a veteran — please check our new military subscriptions page.
• I don’t mention traffic nearly as often as subscriptions here, but we’re in the midst of our busiest month ever: 428,289 page views as of 8 p.m. Friday, with a couple days still left in March.
That breaks down to 292,406 views on the main and mobile sites and an additional 135,883 on the app. Which means we were at 31.8 percent readership on the app, way up from February.
Have I mentioned how much I love the app?
I love everything about its functionality, usability, immediacy, you name it. And I’m even thinking about the app as it relates to providing content, as you might have picked up from the new ‘On the scene’ features that offer faster, quicker reads on events.
If you haven’t downloaded yet, here is our app for iPhone/iPad. And the app for Android.
• Overall app count: 4,834 active downloads from Apple, 2,006 from Android. And when I say active, that’s the net sum of apps actually on someone’s phone. If someone deletes our app, it’s a minus.
• We’re selling baseball gift subscriptions aimed at offering Pirates fans a full year of coverage from spring training onward. A custom baseball-style card will be sent to all gift recipients.
Click the box below for all gift subscription options:
• As of this writing at 11 p.m. Friday, we’re at 9,240 paid subscriptions. We turned eight months old this past Monday, and our stated goal for the first full year was 10,000.
• If you can’t figure out something related to our site or app, please check our Support and App Support pages. About 99 percent of the questions we get can be answered right there. But if your issue isn’t there, email [email protected]
• Thank you, as always, for reading and for your support.
