Do we have enough visitors?

Question

The Area 51 page for this SE:

http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/93238/literature

has us doing reasonably well in questions asked (27.2/day, vs 10 required). Only 73% are answered, but that seems OK to me (though perhaps we should make a point of answering some unanswered questions, even if imperfectly). Other stats are also a bit behind, but it seems to me they're on track to be sufficient.

The one that isn't is the visitor count: 116/day. The goal is 1,500. We have less than a quarter of the 500 "needs some work" mark.

Answer 1

[P]erhaps we should make a point of answering some unanswered questions, even if imperfectly

Please don't.

Even if we have to move slower than usual, I'd much rather that Literature have high quality answers that speak for the site better than a simple statistic can.

If you have a partial answer, sure, go ahead and post it, maybe other users might be able to contribute the missing bits. Or you can discuss in chat. But whatever you do, don't answer just for the sake of answering.

Answer 2

Those stats are unimportant, for several reasons.

1. They've been around since the days when betas were expected to reach all those thresholds and reach them after 90 days or else. That's no longer how we do things. Not all sites will reach those levels, nor should they consider reaching those levels - and only reaching those levels - a success.

2. As Zizouz212 said, they're for sites in public beta. We've still got a week to go, as of today, and because we're in private beta, only a couple hundred people are using the site. Traffic, the userbase, and other important factors will change massively. We'll probably see a sharp drop-off in activity around that time (although hopefully it will eventually rise).

3. They're not what we should be caring about. Numbers are great, but there are better indications of site health, like what kinds of questions we're getting (Are they on-topic? Are they high-quality), whether our tags are working (Are they too specific? Are they too broad?), and other important details.

   Let me also drop another link here, for anyone who thinks we aren't asking the right meta questions: The Real Essential Questions of Every Beta. These are the things we really should be working on.

Answer 3

It's a Private Beta. Relax.

You can only have so many people in a private beta. As we go public, numbers will increase. Stay relaxed, and all is fine :)

Answer 4

Those are the public beta graduation statistics. They're not for private betas, they're for what it used to(!) take to go from public beta to a full-fledged site with its own design & logo.

They're also significantly outdated and not really relevant to site success anymore. A year and a half ago Stack Exchange changed its policies on site graduation. The short version is they were previously set up with the presumption sites needed to be high-traffic to be successful, but they recognised over time that small, low-traffic sites could also be very successful, and so there's no pressure to have that visitor count. You can read more about that here: Graduation, site closure, and a clearer outlook on the health of SE sites

Also as Zizouz212 says, this is a private beta. The majority of any site's traffic comes from Google. Google can't reach us yet (try opening this page in private browsing), so our traffic's going to increase by an order of magnitude once we go public.