During the last 12 months, 2,347,520 people representing every country in the world have visited DomesticShelters.org, making it one of the most visited websites anywhere on the topic of domestic violence.
"It is incredible how many people we are assisting and how efficiently we're doing it," said Preston V. McMurry Jr., who founded Theresa's Fund in 1992 and said its website sees about 268 visitors per hour. "But it's not just about the numbers. We receive messages from victims, survivors, family members and advocates every day thanking us for our free public service and we see more and more people referencing our work. Taken altogether, it tells us whether we're on the right path."
The website was launched in Aug. 2014 and it's annual traffic volume has grown at an increasing pace every year since:
Aug. 14 to Aug. 15 = 169,819 visits
Aug. 15 to Aug. 16 = 600,816 visits (+430,997 visits)
Aug. 16 to Aug. 17 = 1,222,604 visits (+621,788 visits)
Aug. 17 to Aug. 18 = 2,347,520 visits (+1,124,916 visits)
The U.S. and Canada accounted for 91.9 percent of the visitors, followed by the U.K. (2.7%) and Australia (1.5%). However, each year more and more traffic is coming from outside North America. During the first year 6.3 percent of visits came from outside North America and the proportion has since expanded to 8.1 percent.
A similar trend is noted when considering the devices people are using to access the website, as more and more visitors are on mobile devices. During the first year of operations, 53.6 percent of visits were from smartphones or tablets, whereas today that number stands at 60.1 percent.
Traffic patterns to the website also provide insights into what topics are most commonly on visitor's minds. The most frequently viewed pages on the website are a result of people searching for nearby domestic violence programs using the FIND HELP page, followed by reading about topics such as strangulation, proving non-physical abuse in court, patterns of verbal abuse, violating court orders, ways to prevent domestic violence, abuser profiles and identifying abuse.
DomesticShelters.org is the fastest growing website in North America on the topic of domestic violence. It launched in August, 2014, offering a searchable online and mobile database of domestic violence programs to make finding help faster and easier, and has since expanded to include over 600 articles on domestic violence, checklists, risk assessments, toolkits, comprehensive statistics, widgets, recommended books, surveys, and videos.
About Theresa’s Fund
Theresa’s Fund is an Arizona-based 501(c)3 non-profit charity started in 1992 by Preston V. McMurry, Jr. At a time when domestic violence wasn’t yet a headline, Theresa’s Fund focused on changing the landscape of domestic violence services in its home state through grant making, board development and fundraising for Arizona-based organizations like East Valley Child Crisis Center, Sojourner Center, Florence Crittenden, Emerge, UMOM, and West Valley Child Crisis Center. In 2014, it developed the DomesticShelters.org concept as a way to expand its reach to people across the U.S. and Canada. DomesticShelters.org is the first online and mobile searchable database of programs and shelters in the U.S./Canada, and a leading source of helpful tools and information for people experiencing and working to end domestic violence.
