Directing Traffic
31.08.06 @ 9:16 pmI have been a Mint addict for quite some time. I do not go a day without looking at it multiple times. For all that looking however, I have failed to peel beneath the surface of what those numbers mean or start setting goals other than “more traffic”. With each day, I consider this blog increasingly important for both exposure and the learning experience. I am going to start taking my traffic seriously and begin to set goals and create strategies to meet those goals. Because of this, I am rethinking many structural, informational and experiential elements of this site. I am going to make changes to each of those facets in order to meet those goals - I will then analyze if those changes make a positive or negative impact on some metrics I am following and adjust appropriately.
Perhaps the largest metrics I am interested in are the page view to unique visitor ratio and the number of comments per blog post. My three most prolific entry pages are the Sanscons page, Bitcons page and the home page respectively. The drop after those three pages is staggering and I have no doubt that it has much to do with my low page view to unique visits ratio. My greatest priority will be to find a way to get visitors that come through these three pages to continue browsing to other areas of the site. I will no doubt make site-wide changes to help facilitate this, but if I successfully accomplish this task on just these three pages, it will make dramatic results.
Wait! You’re going the wrong way!
Additionally, I want to create an environment more friendly for participation and interaction. My level of comments tends to be cyclical, but recently it has been much lower than normal. I notice that I personally gain so much more from this blog when there is a higher amount of commenting and participation. In addition, this obviously will help with specific traffic issues. Most importantly, more participation means that there is a greater amount of valuable traffic, not just transient surfers.
I have been reading some very interesting articles on generating more interest and participation for one’s site. I am not particularly interested in traffic for revenue issues, but rather for the discourse and exposure to other ideas that many times come along with it. I greatly encourage you to bring up any thoughts you may have on how you think this site could be improved, on the content that is currently being created and any general strategies you think may be helpful. To put everything in perspective, I know the greatest improvement I can make is to increase the quality and quantity of content. I know there no are easy shortcuts to good traffic. What I am hoping is rather than expect my traffic to explode, is to help some of those surfers stay on the site a little longer and perhaps find something else they may enjoy.
What I do not want to engage upon are promotional campaigns, marketing stunts, traffic hiking tricks or any other slimy method of bringing people to a site. For that matter, I do not necessarily want more people coming into the site, I just want more people staying and visiting the site regularly.
Lastly, after some preliminary thoughts on UI alterations, I have already felt the design side of me pushing back. I have recently begun to redefine what design on the web means and what we need to take into consideration. I am quickly starting to believe that this process is going to once again challenge my notions of what is under the umbrella of the “design process”. That being said, I refuse to put something out that will be detrimental to the overall visual aesthetics, the identity of the site or the user experience. What that means I feel is still being defined as well.
Expect changes on this site, expect a lot of writing on what I have done and why and expect updates spelling out how those changes have worked. Until then…design, marketing, metrics, mint, pageviews, promotion, traffic, unique visitors web statistics
September 1st, 2006 at 5:31 am
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Reading this post has absolutely no doubt inspired me to do much of the same reasearch and work on my own site. I’ve been noticing many of the same trends as you and you’ve pointed me in some great directions to make some resolution about them. I look forward to seeing what you’ve got cooking as far as ideas are concerned.
September 1st, 2006 at 11:10 am
Thanks man, I’ll be happy to share the conclusions I come to. I am going to be doing a lot of talking and thinking this weekend. I may even implement some relatively basic changes on a few pages. I also am going to begin setting up some goals within Google Analytics to see if I am actually making progress. I hope to have some thoughts published next week.
September 1st, 2006 at 12:10 pm
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Hilarious graph, despite the decline in viewers. Good to see you’re able to find humor in everything. I definitely have a few ideas in terms of layout. I look forward to chatting with you soon.
September 1st, 2006 at 1:05 pm
Yeah, at the end of the day, it’s a personal blog - it really is hard to take it extraordinarily seriously…
I’m really looking forward to hearing your feedback. I’m going to ask some suggestions from Sergio and Kimmy this weekend as well. I have no doubt these three days will be an enlightening experience.
September 2nd, 2006 at 4:41 am
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If it makes you feel any better despite a falling visitor count the visitors you do have (ie: myself and the commenters above, etc) do read your blog avidly. I personally really enjoy your posts. They are both informative, in depth and -most importantly- make me look at everyday things (such as traffic) from a different angle. I too have been thinking about redesigning my site a little (I need a new project to work on) and no doubt I too will be looking at this article again when the time comes. Cheers for the insite PJ.
September 2nd, 2006 at 9:56 am
Thanks for the kind words Steve.
I really do appreciate you three coming and commenting so much - I hope these next couple weeks prove to be a strong learning experience so I can share with you what I have discovered.
September 2nd, 2006 at 8:23 pm
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[…] As some of you may have read, I am changing some things around here. While it may not be the best decision, I have decided to start implementing some of these changes in real-time. I frankly do not particularly enjoy using this method for changing things on a website, but for various reasons, this seems to be the best way to go. […]
September 7th, 2006 at 10:43 pm
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Why? Why?! PJ are u such a mint whore!?
September 7th, 2006 at 10:46 pm
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I see that Yousuf is lurking around tonight.
September 7th, 2006 at 10:49 pm
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On a serious note. Your site is like a magazine. Thats its draw. I think if you sell out to slimey Google AdSense or any other advertising you’ve got to be careful. Also…bloging is like the mom and pop store for the web. I say dont care too much about traffic just grow in network base and article quality.
September 8th, 2006 at 9:57 am
Yousuf - I assure you there will be nothing slimey about the advertising on this site if I do in fact decide to go forward with it. I challenge you to find someone more disdainful of traditional marketing and advertising than I.
September 21st, 2006 at 2:51 pm
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hi there random dude
i have exactly the same problem for my website http://sprinj.com
about 3/4 of my visitors go read one page which is http://sprinj.com/ideas/view/5-a-mysql-membership-and-role-provider-for-aspnet-20
with google analytics, i can see they stay 4 or 5 minutes and then never go back. it is quite a problem (unlike your problem with the blog) because sprinj is a community website and no users hanging around means 0 value for website. i think thought that UI alterations is the key, the website’s goal and message and is not clearly shown. i clearly need to work this around.