How Coronavirus Has Changed JetPunk's Demographics
First published: Wednesday April 29th, 2020
The events of 2020 so far have changed the lifestyle of everyone. Due to global lockdowns, more people are being told to work from home and thus more people have access to JetPunk! In this surprising change of events, the demographics of JetPunk's users has changed quite drastically over the last few months.
Note: This article is not for politics or discussion on the virus itself, but simply its effects on JetPunk.
Also, before reading the rest of the blog, perhaps you'd like to try guessing the top 15 of 2019 on this quiz: Countries with the Most JetPunk Users
Historical Demographics
First, we shall take a look at the demographics of the last few years to try and see the "normal" and how JetPunk has already changed over time. Below you can see the top countries for 2016-2019, in terms of % of users on the site from that country.
2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
43.0% | United States | 44.0% | United States | 39.5% | United States | 35.2% | United States |
17.5% | United Kingdom | 16.5% | United Kingdom | 18.1% | United Kingdom | 19.0% | United Kingdom |
5.8% | France | 5.2% | Canada | 4.9% | Canada | 5.2% | France |
5.4% | Canada | 4.1% | Australia | 4.5% | France | 4.6% | Canada |
4.0% | Australia | 3.8% | France | 4.2% | Australia | 4.3% | Australia |
2.0% | India | 2.5% | India | 2.7% | India | 3.2% | Poland |
As you can see from this, United States has always been top. Though what is noticeable is the drop in % in the last few years, whereby repping almost a third of the users instead of nearly half. With the UK, Canada and Australia all consistently in the top 5, it seems clear that the Anglosphere uses JetPunk more than any other. This, of course, makes absolute sense given the majority of the website is indeed in English.
What is noticeable though, is how in 2019 India dropped off the top 6, being replaced by Poland. This was due to the "Polish boom" which happened in 2019 thanks to a mid-size Polish YouTuber playing JetPunk. Many of you would've noticed this if you were here around April 2019. But overall, these results are perhaps telling that JetPunk is reaching a wider audience outside English.
2020 Begins Normally
In January of 2020, we had the following top 6.
January 2020 | |
---|---|
33.6% | United States |
18.1% | United Kingdom |
7.8% | Poland |
4.8% | Canada |
4.5% | France |
3.2% | Australia |
Clearly, 2020 started off in a fairly normal fashion. The top 6 contained the same countries as 2019, with a change of ranks. Poland's domination continues thanks to another boost "Polish boom #2" starting in December 2019, leading to a massive influx of new users from there. But overall, January felt like a normal start for the most part. The Anglosphere dominated, with a slight tendency towards non-English gradually increasing its presence.
March 2020: Global Lockdowns
As you will surely know, many countries across the world began locking down in March 2020 due to Covid-19. It started with border closures, then came "Stay-at-Home" orders, and now much of the world we thought we knew has drastically changed. Everybody who's able to work from home, is now doing so. School's and Universities have moved to online learning in an attempt to socially distance students. Both of these have a massive effect on who has access to JetPunk and when.
Most users may have noticed that weekdays are often the busiest here on JetPunk, and this ties in with the fact school and workplaces are much busier on weekdays too. However, with lockdowns pursuing, the disparity between weekdays and weekends has massively dropped. With less fixation on timetables at home than at work, people are using JetPunk all days of the week, not only as a procrastination tool.
Now comes to the data. What should we expect? Well if everybody is staying home, then surely not much will have changed? Right? Wrong! The results have caused a major shift in traffic...
March 2020 | |
---|---|
27.4% | United States |
21.3% | United Kingdom |
6.7% | Poland |
5.2% | India |
4.3% | France |
4.2% | Canada |
So what's happened? Well, the actual number of users from the United States, is largely unchanged. But what has changed is the number of users in Europe and India. The United Kingdom has blasted ahead, repping a much larger percentage of the traffic than it ever has done in the past. Poland is still going strong in 3rd place. India now joins the leagues again, with traffic from India increasing by over 4x the week after the lockdown happened there compared to the week before.
This global shift to online working has brought more traffic to JetPunk than ever before, and it's clear that certain countries have developed a thirst for JetPunk more than others
April 2020
As of writing this (April 29th), here's the current stats for April 2020:
April 2020 | |
---|---|
36.0% | United Kingdom |
19.3% | United States |
4.5% | Poland |
4.4% | France |
4.3% | India |
3.7% | Australia |
This is where we see major changes. Compared to March, traffic from the United States is still flat and seem unchanged with the stay-at-home orders in place in many states. However, traffic from the UK has doubled from March. That's right, it's not a mistake, more than a third of users on JetPunk right now are Brits, almost double the current number of Americans. It seems us Brits can't get enough quizzing now that pubs and shops are closed, so we've resorted to exploring JetPunk instead.
I suspect, after all this has finished, that the U.S. will eventually regain its crown atop the JetPunk users. However, for now at least, the U.K. will remain victorious among the JetPunkers of the world. Perhaps maybe many of them will stay with JetPunk after this is all over.
Conclusion
The virus has changed the way we live in drastic ways. So much so that JetPunk is no longer dominated by Americans, and it's in fact the British who have conquered JetPunk, repping over a third of all users in April 2020.
What do you think might happen in the future? Should we all start making "Top 10 U.K. Counties" quizzes instead of "Top 10 U.S. States"? Perhaps more quizzes on Poland should be created to compensate for the influx of users from there.
Source: Google Analytics, Jan 1st 2016 - Apr 29th 2020
We get more UK visitors but they view far fewer pages on average.
The simplest explanation is that we seem to be getting more search traffic from the UK. Perhaps this is a change in Google's algorithm. Or maybe someone is buying ads on Google to siphon off our traffic, but only for the lucrative US market. Or maybe British people are just searching for quizzes.
It's hard to tease apart since a large chunk of our traffic comes from people going to Google, searching for JetPunk, and then clicking the link.
Of course, what I really care about in my greedy little heart is revenue, in which the US still beats the UK by a good margin. And, unfortunately, Indian traffic doesn't even pay for its own bandwidth.
I enjoy the "top 10 U.S. States" quizzes and the like, but I'd be happy to see more quizzes focusing on the UK, India, Poland, and so on. I probably won't do very well on them at first, but I would learn new things and that's part of the fun.
Btw, just wanted to know that if I use Jetpunk multiple times a day does that count only once or multiple times?
I have done my bit and stuck a British - well, English - interest quiz on here: https://www.jetpunk.com/user-quizzes/1308368/saxon-and-viking-kings-of-england
E.g.: If you have 1 000 Canadian users and 100 000 total users, you'd have 1% Canadians. But if the total goes to 200 000 total users and none of them is Canadian, you'd have only 0.5% of jetpunkers from Canada without "losing" any visitors.
P.S. I'm aware that the real numbers are much bigger, but I think it's easier to understand the logic without too many zeros.
P.P.S. Stewart, we've written simultaneously. :)
Heres Their Post
As you can see, pretty much as expected. Also of note, during lockdown daily French takes have almost doubled, so it makes sense that that is currently repping a higher % than Polish, especially when you add that French is spoken in Canada, Belgium and Switzerland too. That's mostly why Spanish is above German, despite being lower in daily takes, because Spanish has contributions from Latin America and USA too.
Finally, note that again this is users, so they may be skewed.
However, I never heard of anyone but me using it, never heard about this youtuber playing it etc. I don't even remember when I registered (I was doing some quizzes before that), but it was long before the boom.
When it comes to the quizzes in Polish, I rarely take them - I got used to the English versions.
Question to the admins - as the majority of the promoted quizzes are USA-oriented (well, duh) - what are the chances of a quiz about Poland to be promoted if I create one (of course I'm looking for a broad answer, preety much just acknowledging that the "problem" is noticed)? For a long time I have some ideas how to make a series about Polish history, aimed towards an international user. But, to be fair, I don't have a lot of motivation to do it seeing what ends up with points etc.
Although I'm not British, I *am* currently resident in England. My JetPunk account is a few years old, but I'd been letting it sit mostly idle over the last year or so. I drifted back onto the site during lockdown while stuck at home, as you posit so many UKers have done. So I suppose I've contibuted very slightly to the rise in UK traffic you've detected.
Overall I don't think there's enough of a bias to justify tailoring quizzes as such :)
In all seriousness, I actually like how Jetpunk has more diversity than it did before the pandemic :)