Many websites show their usage statistics. For example, this website on the bottom of the page shows the number of people that are using the website at the moment, and how many updates were made. It's also constantly updated. Other websites show the number of registered users and other stats.
It seems cool, and, presumably, creates trust and interest in the product. But these are just my ideas. I would like to hear your thoughts and a reference to related research if exists.
The answer is quite simple. This kind of data ("number of users", "number of posts", "number of sales" etc.) are used as social proof to drive sales/sign ups to your product. It is much easier to trust something that is used by millions of people, right?
For example Tumblr emphasizes the most crucial data for their micro-blogging platform, the number of blogs and posts, right on their sign up page.
I think these numbers might be a good ice breaker for user to actually try the product. It can also be accompanied by user testimonials which add more personal recommendation. Basecamp homepage as example:
Website statistics and analytics is the only driver for commercial sales price. There is almost nothing else as simple as "Visitors" to work with. Because of that, websites that don't sell products need to show number of visitors, no of clicks, no of unique users by hour, day and month.
The more visitors, clicks, unique users you got, the higher the sales price. And this is true even if everyone already knows that hit rate is useless and what you really should care about is conversion rate.
Sadly, the change from hit rate to conversion rate is taking too long, IMHO.
More to read: Web Analytics 2.0 by Avinash Kaushik
