A major Government campaign using a website to entice expats to return home has been labelled a "feel-good flop" because of plummeting visitor numbers.
The site - www.newzealandnow.info - made headlines in December for publishing a list comparing English and New Zealand prices on items such as condoms, protein smoothies
and Big Macs. The site was launched last year as the centrepiece of a $3 million Department of Labour campaign to combat the brain drain.
But figures obtained by the Herald on Sunday show the number of unique visitors to the site has dropped by 80 per cent since the launch, from 28,416 in November to 5465 last month.
Almost half the visitors are from within New Zealand or an unknown domain.
Traffic bottomed out in January with just 4504 unique visitors. According to web traffic monitor Alexa.com, that puts the New Zealand Now site in the same league as the Ministry of Women's Affairs website. InternetNZ vice-president and prominent blogger David Farrar said the visitor figures were comparable to that of "an obscure blog".
By comparison, Russell Brown's high-profile PublicAddress.net blog receives up to 40,000 unique visits a month, while the country's most popular website, Trade Me, enjoys around 2.6 million.
Launching the website amid an advertising blitz in November, Immigration Minister David Cunliffe said the campaign's effectiveness would be judged by the attitudes of expats towards New Zealand and the number of hits on the site.
Despite that aim, Department of Labour spokesman Richard Ninness said the Department did not have targets for desired visitor numbers. The site's performance was in line with expectations. "That drop in numbers is not something we're concerned about at the moment."
Around 460,000 Kiwis live overseas, including 355,000 across the Tasman (77 per cent) and 58,000 (13 per cent) in Britain.
But on average, only 3.6 per cent of the visitors to the site each month were from Australia, compared with 12.1 per cent from Britain.
The site is due to be publicly launched in Australia in the next two months and Mr Ninness said it was hoped that would lead to a spike in traffic.
That the site was being visited from within New Zealand was positive, he said.
"These people [expats] have links to New Zealand, so as much as possible raising awareness in New Zealand is important."
