23 October 2008

Top 5 Reasons Why People Use MSDN and Other Fun MSDN Factoids

Part of running a global network of websites is looking at numbers – lots of numbers. Recently, we had a look at metrics from MSDN and TechNet from July to September. Here are some highlights on MSDN. Next post will be TechNet.

As a member of the MSDN community, I hope you find this interesting. If you’d like to see more or different metrics, please let me know.

And, thank you to all our visitors and especially the ones who completed our satisfaction survey!

Worldwide Reach Increases

MSDN sites averaged 17.4 million Unique Visitors (UVs) per month in the Jun-Sep period. This is up about 10% from the same period last year. (Source: WebTrends)

Top 5 Locales

Microsoft manages dozens of country-specific MSDN and TechNet sites. These are the top country-specific sites sorted by average monthly traffic in the Jun-Sep period. This list is also based on data from WebTrends.

The rest of the factoids are sourced from Jun-Sep data from the monthly satisfaction survey on the US MSDN site.

Top 5 Ways People Get to MSDN

Search (44%)
Typed in the URL (13%)
Favorites or Bookmarks (13%)
From within a Microsoft Product (9%)
From www.microsoft.com (5%)

Top 5 Tasks

More than 80% of the visits to MSDN are driven by these top 5 tasks:

Lookup reference info (27%)
Find out how to perform a task (24%)
Learn about a product or technology (18%)
Downloads (10%)
Troubleshooting (8%)

Question: Is this they way you see your tasks as a developer? Have any suggestions for us?

Top 5 Developer Centers

MSDN is made up of dozens of smaller mini-sites called “Developer Centers,” which are dedicated to specific developer tools and technologies. Here are the top 5.

Other Fun Factoids

I thought these were kind of interesting as well…

Which of the following best describes your level of knowledge and skills related to the product or technology you are researching today?

Beginner	17%
Basic	21%
Intermediate	41%
Expert	22%

How often do you visit MSDN?

More than once a day	27%
Once a day	7%
A few times a week	26%
Once a week	5%
A few times a month	14%
Once a month	3%
Less than once a month	8%
This is my first visit	10%

What resources did you use during your visit to MSDN today? (Please select all that apply)

Technical documentation and articles	56%
Knowledge Base articles	33%
Downloads	22%
Newsgroups and forums	15%
eLearning	8%
MSDN Events	4%
MSDN Virtual Labs	4%
MSDN Magazine	4%
MSDN Webcasts	3%
Skills Assessments	3%
Other (Please specify)	9%