Traffic to charities' websites jumped 800% following tsunami disaster
Howard Lake | 26 January 2005 | News
Online traffic analysis service Hitwise UK reports that, following the tsunami disaster on 26 December 2004, traffic to charities’ (or “humanitarian”) websites grew by more than 800% in four days.
Hitwise UK reports that the large number of visitors to UK charities’ sites at the end of December 2004 resulted in those sites accounting for 0.4% of all UK Internet traffic by 30 December, up from 0.05% on 26 December.
Hitwise added that “the website of the UK’s Disaster Emergency Committee… was the most visited charity website with almost 30% share of all visits made to charity websites. “
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The analysts added that “the appeal for donations to the crisis resulted in the website increasing its ranking by over 120 places in the space of seven days, from the week ending December 25 to January 1”.
However, Hitwise UK point out that at first the DEC site could not cope: “the overwhelming response to the appeal resulted in people having difficulty making donations online and instead visitors were advised to make a donation by telephone.”
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.