Visitor
Forgot your password? Get it here...
Not a member? Register here...

Visitor Stats

Since the re-launch of the TMW-KAHS alumni site on February 16th, 2009, there has been quite a bit of visitor activity.

The announcement mailing went out late on that day, resulting in 16 visitors to the site. In the days preceding the mailing, there had been an average of 5 or less visitors per day. On the following day, February 17th, the site received 134 visitors – the highest single day record. Obviously, this was a direct reaction to the mailing. Since then, the number of daily visits has been relatively stable, between 15 and 75 visits per day. Sundays tend to be the “slowest” days and Mondays the most active.

On average, visitors read 6 pages per visit and spend around 9-10 minutes on the site.

Of the 830 visits to date, 478 were first-time visitors to the site (which translates to 57.59%). This also means that a little over 40% of the visitors have visited the site more than once – which is good. Ours was a small school and our alumni site is not going to radically grow its membership. Over time, the percentage of repeat visitors will/should increase in relation to first-time visitors.

I have continued to poach the social sites and I’ve been writing anyone I found that belongs to us, urging them to register.

When I took over the data available on the previous version of the site, there were 389 names. At this writing, we have 467 alumni listed in the database, or 71 more than on February 16th. I will continue “poaching” until we get all the members that we possibly can.

A bit more disappointing has been the number of registrations, although these are still trickling in at the rate of 1-2 a day. As of today, March 3rd, 2009, we have 70 registered members. Of the 70 registrations, approximately 15 are from alumni that were previously not listed on the site nor registered in the Yahoo Group.

One of the problems with the alumni database is the fairly high number of emails that no longer work (97) and alumni for which we have no email addresses (18). That represents 115 alumni that were once active and that we can no longer reach. This percentage is in line with the email bounce rate on the Yahoo Group maintained by Colene, where out of 135 registered users, 38 email addresses are “bouncing”.

Most comments about the re-design of the site have been positive but there have been a few comments about the “need” for the change. I won’t tell you that this is “change you can believe in”, but this change will make it much easier to maintain the site and the alumni database. Registered members can now update their own data and that should keep the site more up to date. Finally, the new version offers a higher degree of privacy than was possible in the past.

To address the concern of members who have expressed doubts about the new design, in the coming days, I will be creating an alternate view of the site. In addition to the current design, favored by most, there will also be an alternative that will closely resemble the old format. This “old” format, due to the personal data it exposes, will only be visible to registered members, as is the wish of the majority of the alumni.

As always, I am thankful for any suggestions or comments you provide.

Share a thought, memory or comment...

You must be logged in to post a comment.