In total we’ve had over 765.000 visitors from 227 countries generating almost 3,5 million unique views, which is an increase of 91,3% over 2016, when we were still called Left-Lane.com. This growth curve has been pretty stable at this level all through the year, so we hope to continue like that in 2018. You also commented 1.435 times on our articles, of which the two greatest commenters contributed 140 times and 111 times respectively. Most visitors (almost 165.000, 21,5% of the total) came from the United States, followed by the United Kingdom with 57.000 (7,5%), which makes sense as this site is in English. But a lot of you also came from Italy (30.850, 4%), Germany and France (both just below 30.000). Poland is #6 with almost 22.000 viewers (2,9%), followed by India (17.000, 2,2%), Canada (14.000, 1,8%), Japan (13.250) and Netherlands (12.450). We also had 3 viewers from North Korea and 1 each from St. Barthélemy, Christmas Island, Western Sahara, Falkland Islands, Micronesia, Greenland, Comoros, Northern Mariana Islands, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Samoa. The best ever day was December 5th with over 16.000 views. Our facebook follower count has grown to 343 followers and our e-mail subscription list has grown to almost 1.400 subscribers who get the latest articles in their mailbox twice a week.
Kriss and I have published 308 new posts (Kriss: 165, Bart: 143) and 227 new pages in 2017, bringing the total to 1.144 posts and 2.464 pages full of data. The most popular pages are those of Alfa Romeo: the brand tops both the European and US top-3, followed by Fiat, BMW and Jaguar in Europe, and by Subaru and BMW in the US. The Chinese top-3 of most popular brands on CarSalesBase.com consists of BMW, BYD and Geely. At model level, Alfa Romeo again tops the rankings, with the Giulia and Stelvio the two most visited pages in the European sales section, even though the latter was only published on April 28th. The Fiat Tipo was in third position. The Giulia also tops the ranking in the US sales section, and the Stelvio is in 4th place, but considering it was only published on July 5th, it was more popular than the BMW 3-Series/4-Series and Honda CR-V in the second half of the year. In China, the best sellers are also the best visited pages, with the Volkswagen Lavida leading the charts ahead of the Wuling Hongguang. In late 2016 we’ve added the total market sales per country section, and even though we publish sales data of more than 140 countries, the most popular are hardly surprising: United Kingdom, Germany and Italy.
One of the most popular items on CarSalesBase.com are the quarterly segment reports, with the 2017 full year reports for the US starting later this week and those for Europe expected in the beginning of February. From the European segments, the Compact and Midsized Crossover segment is the most popular, followed by that of the Compact Cars. The Small Crossover segment also enjoys increasing popularity. Of the US segment reports, the most popular is the Compact SUV segment, followed by Premium Midsized Cars and Premium Large SUVs, with Midsized SUVs also worth a special mention as a good #4.
We also published 24 polls in 2017, bringing the total to 99. Two polls really stood out in terms of the number of votes: “Which car was the star of the Detroit Auto Show?” with 1.963 voters of whom 39% picked the Sporty Korean (Kia Stinger GT) and “Do you think the Alfa Romeo Giulia is a hit or a miss?” with 717 voters of whom 56% considered it a hit. In third place we find another Auto Show question: “Which are your favorites of the Geneva Auto Show 2017?” with 319 voters giving 773 votes, of which 23% favored the Alpine A110.
And finally, one of the major additions to our site in 2017 is the new chart comparison tool, which visualizes the sales figures of up to 8 selected models or brands in order to easily compare them. Since its launch in August, it has already been used over 11.000 times.
Thank you all for your continued support of this site, your viewership and comments are what keeps us going. We’re looking forward to delivering even more data, analysis and opinions in 2018!
