In 2020 on average the FIA website received 31k visitors every month. In March we saw record figures for the number of visitors on our website with 52.5k visits during the start of the pandemic in March. Our research has found that our website traffic increased because of our work on confirming key worker status for fire professionals. FIA supported the Fire industry enquiring the government to clarify the status of the fire safety workers. On 15th April the Minister of State defined Key Worker Status in the fire safety industry in the letter directly sent to FIA.

Whilst growth in 2020 was driven predominantly by the news, other sections of our website have also seen a strong uplift namely Training, Technical Documents Resources, CPD events, etc - saw record figures. Although the majority of visitors consumed coronavirus related content, most of the audience went on to read a wide range of additional content.

Our website's audience consists predominantly of UK visitors; nonetheless, we enjoy a strong representation of visitors from the United States, India, Ireland, Netherlands, France, Hong Kong, Germany and Australia.

On the topic of gender, 71% of FIA visitors are male and 29% of visitors are females. When it comes to age, over the last years we have observed that the average age of visitors to our website is younger. We found it very interesting that we are most visited by the 25-34 years old age group because our industry is thought to have an older average age.

Although unsurprisingly we have also observed that over the course of the last few years our audience is visiting us less frequently on the website and nearly half of the visitors in 2020 used mobile or tablet as a device.

FIA Social media channels are also performing very well and we are still growing and are far from reaching plateau. As of January 2021, we have 25k of subscribers to our LinkedIn FIA page. We have nearly 7k subscribers on our Twitter and above 1k followers on our Facebook page.

Our bi-weekly newsletter, called Focus, subscriber count is still growing, we nearly reached 6k subscribers this month which is a steady increase of 30%  over the last 3 years. This number takes into account those who subscribed and unsubscribed. We are continuing to tailor the content of this industry-leading newsletter and have committed to including a Fireside Chat in every edition of Focus.

At the FIA we listen to your needs. We continuously explore the Google Analytics results and conclusions. It is our intention this year to continue accommodating the needs of our changing audience. Whether that be making changes to meet the display requirements of the devices or reflecting the preferences of our audience and making FIA website more user-friendly.