TRAFFIC
Site Hits
Monitoring
Statistics
Information
Meaning What
VISITORS
Traffic
Navigation
Menus
Site Theme
Updates
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HITS THE BIG
MISCONCEPTION
Hits on YOUR SITE
A great number of sites on the WWW have Hit Counters at the bottom of
there entry or home page.
What do these actually do....? Apart from showing those visiting your
home page how many times its been HIT - not much if you think about it. Does
the counter tell you who these people are, where they have come from, or
how to contact them, what other pages they visited, or if they are
return visitors...? Not likely unless they are very sophisticated
hit counters. They might look good and that's about all the good they
provide you.
Monitoring your Visitors
If you have the time and money to invest in the technology all kinds of
data can be obtained about the visitors to your site....but you will
have to have a deep pocket to get any real statistics of benefit or that
you can use in a productive way to generate SALES from them or be
able to use them to your advantage.
What happens to the hit counter if a visitor doesn't come in through the
front door...your home page? They don't get counted...they might have
been referred to a link page in the middle of your site...so they aren't
a statistic as far as your counter is concerned....they don't get a
mention.
What's the answer...?
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Statistic Generators
If you don't have deep pockets and you don't want to spend time setting
up your own database have a look at what your Hosting Service Provider
has to offer or search the WWW there are FREE services out there that
provide statistical information about people visiting your site....where
they are from, who referred them, what page they accessed, and if they
have come back. All kinds of interesting information...even down to the
screen resolution used and their operating system.
Whether any of this is of use is a different matter... and what you do
with the information is another matter as well.
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Statistical Information
Keywords:
This is the first useful piece of information which is available...What
keywords your visitors used to find you.
When Visited:
When did your site get visited...Monday, Tuesday, day, night, etc.
Referrals:
How did they find your site/page...search engine, direct hit, etc. What
search engine...
How Many:
How many visited your site/page on a daily, weekly, monthly basis.
Where From:
Where did they come from...what was there URL. What email address...?
First time or Repeat:
Were they first timers and/or did they come back and what part of the
site caught their interest?
Browsers:
What browsers did they have...?
Was Java enabled and what version...?
Search Engines:
Which search engines did they use...?
Time:
What time did they visit and frequency...?
What Country:
Which country did they come from..?
Visitor Loyalty:
Repeat visitors...? First time...?
Domains:
What domains were are they from..?
And the kind of information goes on...and on...depending on how
sophisticated your service is and what you want to get out of the
statistics.
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What Does it ALL
Mean
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VISITORS
Traffic
By traffic I am not talking about cars, what I am talking about is
visitors to your site.
Assuming that you have got it all right and you have been listed and
people apart from you can find your site the next hurdle you have to get
over is that of upload times of your page from the host server when
somebody types in you URL. What happens when your page starts to load
into your visitors browser and your visitor sees nothing for but the
'loading......' message, is that if it lasts for any more than 20 to 30
seconds the visitor is gone. Sure faster modems and direct cable links
mean faster download times generally but there are still people out
there who use 56K modems and the rule is any more than 30 seconds at
28.8K and your visitor is gone.
What does that mean for the Architect who wants to show of his projects
using images is obvious - the larger the image content the slower the
load times and as a consequence you might be stopping visitors because
of your content.
Similar principles apply to the page background design - many architect
site use images for backgrounds - all of these as well as large project
images mean the same thing ....your visitors are gone before they
arrive.
The answer - find a piece of software which allows you to create
'thumbnails' of your photos - smaller files which load faster, as well
as storing the larger images on your host server so that if somebody
wants to see the 'full photo' they can click on the thumbnail and your
server will load just one image and quickly.
After all isn't it the visitors you are after in the hope that you might
be able to get some projects out of your website?
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Navigation
Once you got the visitors into your site you will want them to be able
to find the information that's there easily and logically - don't you?
In looking at architect sites on the WWW I've found many where it is not
obvious what the site is about and it is not obvious what information is
being provided and it is certainly not obvious how the designer intends
for you to find that information. Sure there is the 'back button' in
your browser but place yourself into the visitors shoes and imagine what
would happen if you couldn't get to the information that was supposed to
be on the site - wouldn't leave AND NOT COME BACK thinking that that
site was a waste of time?
I know I would!
So make sure you have navigation bars that provide a 'click' to the page
that has that particular piece of information on it and when your
visitor gets there if you have more information about that piece provide
him or her with a next 'logical click link' to that piece and so on.
Don't forget when he or she gets to the end provide a link back to your
home page.
You can use TOP SIDE AND BOTTOM MENU LINKS on your site - some software
packages such as FrontPage have wizards that create these automatically.
At the end of the day keep them simple - if you complicate them all you
are doing is creating another headache for yourself.
Return BOOKMARKS like the one below are also a good idea to get somebody
back to the relevant table of contents - help and make it easy for your
visitor and they stay and browse.
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Menus
From what I have been able to find out there is no right or wrong menu
system to use for your site. At least the menu system doesn't make any
difference to the way your site is indexed or scored.
The basis of your menu system should be one of simplicity.
If you look at this site I've placed a menu bar at the top where all the
main items of information that I want people to find can be found.
Along the right side I've included a sub-menu reference bar which allows
expansion of the main menu - so that people can go to specific topics to
find the information they want.
While at the bottom I've included a back and forward button which allows
them to navigate once they have got that far.
I've found this works for my site it may or may not work for yours. The
important thing is to keep it simple and give your visitors the simple
options of navigation depending on the content of your site.
I've kept the design of the buttons simple an consistent so that
visitors get the idea as soon as they enter my site.
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Site Theme
One of the ways the you can identify your sites content and give people
an understanding about the content of your site is to develop a 'site
theme'.
I've looked at a great number of architect sites on the web - most are
pretty 'flat and say nothing about the site'. If you look at sites like
YAHOO or ALTA VISTA you can identify them easily because each has
distinctive graphics at the top which gives each a theme and a
'trademark' appearance.
I've done the same for my site - and being an architect site the
graphics of the background give it a sense of 'technology' - I think it
works and provides a basic structure which is evident throughout the
site.
The experts say that you need an element which will stick in your
visitors minds and identify your site from others - remember there are
millions of site on the WWW and growing each minute.
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Updates
You need to keep your information current and updated. At the bottom of
this site there is a footer which does just that.
Apart from a link back to the webmaster via email the software I use
generates the time and date information for the last time the page was
opened and modified.
Many robots look for this kind of information when they revisit your
site - OH YES they do come back to check if you are still there and if
there is any new information AND they do score your site better if there
is new content.
So keep your site information current and add to it regularly - it
effects your traffic and popularity.
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Victor Z Yanchenko has been involved with
computer technology since 1969 specifically in the areas of evaluating
CAD based mainframe and PC based systems. In the early 1970's he
assisted in the development of APDesign a PC based third party
application specifically for use by Architects with AutoCAD the worlds
most widely used PC based AEC software. In the early 1990's, apart from
his Architectural responsibilities he designed, managed and maintained
several Web Sites including the Sarlos Yanchenko Collaborative Web
Site as well as undertaking implementation and integration of Internet
based remote Design and Documentation of various projects for
clients in locations such as Mongolia, Thailand, Malaysia as well as
other Asian and Oceania based projects.
This site was built using some of the knowledge and information in
this article.
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