Below the Fold?
I recently read an article by Clicktale called "Unfolding the Fold". Clicktale are a web stats and usability group that specialise in monitoring web users beyond the normal hits/visitor approach. They actually let their customers watch every action a visitor takes on their site, by recording movies of each visitors actions, these films show hotspots, where the mouse hovers and how a visitor navigates and interacts with the site. In its own right, a great service, though I'm not writing to sell it.
In the years that we've been working on the web, we used to work hard to make sure that content remained above the fold. This refers back to the broadsheet newspaper, where the biggest and most important headline gets the top of the page and content that went below the fold was considered second rate news. The same applied to the web, as with lots of new media, the web took this at face value and many sites were originally designed to be able to present all the information without scrolling anywhere.
Clicktale has now given us some great evidence that this is no longer the case. From Nov-Dec last year Clicktale studied 120,000+ page views and their habits and I quote :
- 91% of the page-views had a scroll-bar.
- 76% of the page-views with a scroll-bar, were scrolled to some extent.
- 22% of the page-views with a scroll-bar, were scrolled all the way to the bottom.
"These statistics demonstrate that the vast majority of web designers are designing pages with scrolling, that the majority of users do scroll and that a significant portion of them scroll all the way to the page bottom. While 22% may seem low at first, it is actually quite high as many page-views are repeat views where the visitors have previously scrolled all the way to the page bottom and are already familiar with the page. In addition, visitors often find what they are looking for near the beginning of the page and may not bother scrolling further down. "
I think this change has come about from a few different areas. The phenomenon of social content sites like Facebook, MySpace, Digg etc are all based on people commenting (and submitting) on the content that's shared by that online community. In Digg's case, a bunch of people submit stories from (mostly) traditional media sources and the ones deemed most interesting are voted to the front page. Where the interaction comes are peoples views on the stories, so the commenting, much like on a forum, runs on and on down the page. For people to interact, they need to scroll down the page.
So, summing up from this....utilise space, the more space around content is a great way to make a site feel bigger and 'roomier'. Don't get caught up on resolution and screen size and don't try and squeeze the content into the top of the page!
Have a great week....
Mark
Labels: above-the-fold, social-content, web-design, Web-Design-Melbourne
Posted on Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Web statistics, myths and mysteries : beyond hits and page views
In the past, it was easy to get confused about web stats. You could find websites that would talk of having 250,000 "hits" a month, hits being a wildly inaccurate way to monitor traffic....why? Because if I have a page with some text and five images, when you load that page in your browser it counts as six hits, one for the page and five for the images.
Nielsen NetRatings' (a global marketing company that records large site traffic) then moved to looking at page views. This moved away from hits and took into consideration how many pages were viewed by a visitor. Unique visitors (my page views as opposed to yours) then started to be termed as your sites 'Reach' and would separate unique visitors and their page views, using these two as the main statistical measurement out there.
It helped large sites understand how many people were visiting. Whilst reach and page views gave advertisers an ability to sell online, underpinning the first dot-com boom and still being a massive resource today. In Australia alone, online advertising spend topped $1 billion in 2007.
With the arrival of new web technologies like Ajax, the page itself doesn't reload but the content still changes. Thus making page views obsolete (see example here - click on any of the tabs across the top of the page, same page, new content). A visitor can look at dozens of new content sections, but the page they're visiting remains the same! To help combat this, Nielsen has just released 'Total Time' counts, which account for how long a visitor spends on a page and has removed or killed off page views. Total Time is better than anything before, but still....how many times do you browse to a page, get distracted, go to a meeting or lunch and and leave the browser open?
I don't know if there is a fair way to monitor web traffic perfectly but I think it's getting better. Regardless of some of the failings, people should be looking at their statistics. It's really important to look at your site past the date of launch. At Efront, we try and work with our clients past the launch of their store, site or blog to make sure they are getting the best return they can from it. This includes making sure that the content is updated regularly, utilising marketing tools like email subscription services and checking back on their statistics. All of the hosting services we offer include comprehensive statistical information that make this easier and let our clients tailor their content and their message to suit their audience.
My rant for the day is over :) Get in touch if you've got any questions or if you'd like to see how we can help you get more out of your online presence...
All the best,
Mark
Labels: Online-Stores, statistics, Web-Hosting, Web-statistics
Posted on Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Jazzhead Records : 3 more great artists
Jazzhead continues to release some of the best of Australia's jazz muso's. We had the pleasure of building three more microsites for Jazzhead to add to their already stellar line up.
WAY OUT WEST - 'Old Grooves for New Streets' shows that Way Out West has developed a unique and alluring sound, which blends Vietnamese and African influences with jazz in a surprising and vibrant manner.
www.jazzhead.com/wayoutwest/
MISINTERPROTATO - 'Variations' is the captivating third album from one of Australia's most inventive, contemporary music ensembles, Misinterprotato.
www.jazzhead.com/variations/
ANDREA KELLER QUARTET - 'Little Claps' is both distinctive and alluring, the Quartet perform contemporary, improvised, original music, which challenges the traditional role-play of instruments in a jazz context.
www.jazzhead.com/littleclaps/
Hope you have a great week....
Mark
Posted on Monday, July 16, 2007
Online Store Launch
A quick note to welcome our newest online store Jewelry Zoo!
Jewelry Zoo has an amazing collection of unique jewellery. Now you can buy that perfect piece of tribal or unique jewellery without having to travel across the world!
The original Jewelry Zoo store was a template based model which we've completely redesigned from the ground up. One of the challenges is not losing valuable links already in Google. With a little bit of creative thinking we developed a work around that would allow for the existing active Google links to redirect to the new URL. This has helped make for a smooth transition.
It's been great working with the Jewelry Zoo team and integrating a number of new features into the online store model. The Jewelry Zoo online store works with the St George integrated payments gateway - so credit cards are processed automatically on checkout.
All up, we're really proud with the result!
If you'd like to talk to us about a new online shop you're planning, or would like to see the options for migrating your current store - give us a call on 1300 EFRONT.
All the best,
David
Labels: AJAX, Online-Stores
Posted on Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Father Bob Maguire Foundation
Inspired by the lifetime work of one of Australia's genuine heroes, the outspoken South Melbourne parish priest, Fr Bob Maguire, this is a foundation connected to the very fibre of our community and its pressing social issues.
The Fr Bob Maguire Foundation is a listed Public Benevolent Institution (PBI). That is, it's a non-profit institution organised for the direct relief of poverty, sickness, suffering, distress, misfortune, disability or helplessness.
We're pleased to have been able to help out by developing the
foundations website.
Why not take a minute to learn about the good work Father Bob's foundation does and help out with a donation? Every bit helps!
Click here to learn more.
Labels: design, Web-Design-Melbourne, Web-Hosting
Posted on Tuesday, July 10, 2007
MySpace Statistics and Design
We had a great response to the recent post on the MySpace redesign we did for Fiona Burnett - www.myspace.com/fionaburnett - and to be honest I was a little shocked at the traffic we got.
We all know it's popular, but I thought I'd look into the stats behind MySpace. Steve Reubel at Micro Persuasion has listed some info on (what I think) is one of the ugliest and hardest to use sites out there.
- It is the largest online social networking portal on the web
- It has 61 + million registered users with 21+ million unique visitors
**note : Media kit from MySpace now says 64 million** - It's the second largest destination on the web, by page views
**note : now relegated to number 6 behind Yahoo, MSN, Google, YouTube, Windows Live - alexa.com** - It splits 50.2% male, 49.8% female
- They reach more men online than ESPN.com. They reach more females online than iVillage.
- The primary age demo is 16-34
- They have 1.4 million registered bands, 350,000 band blogs
- The site attracts 220,000 new registrants daily
**note - what the??** - There are 50,000 groups including fashion, health, wellness & fitness, sports and recreation, music, film, TV, etc.
- And last but not least it costs $35,000 to launch a profile for marketing purposes.
Wow. Again, no matter how much any of us can disapprove of the way MySpace looks and works, you cannot argue with those numbers.
All we can do is continue in our quest to clean MySpace up. If you've got a profile you'd like cleaned up (re-skinned/designed/pimped etc) feel free to get in touch to learn more.
All the best,
Mark
Labels: design, My Space, MySpace, pimp, redesign, reskin, statistics
Posted on Wednesday, July 04, 2007
How to get a better Google ranking Part 3
If you're serious about getting a better ranking in Google you need to invest some time in checking your website statistics.
At a minimum, your stats will give you an idea if your site is generating more or less traffic. If your visitor numbers are growing, then a little more digging will help you understand how visitors are coming to your site and what they are looking for.
Mention the word stats and most people start to nod off - so the stats talk stops there.
There are some great tools however that can help you understand the phrases and words used by visitors coming from search engines. One tool which we use across many of our sites is free and is provided by 103Bees.com.
You add some code to your webpages and this system will keep an eye out for visitors coming from search engines. Like little worker bees, the system gathers the search terms that people have used and stores them so you can analyse later.
If you blog regularly, it's amazing to see how quickly you can start to get incoming visitors on different phrases that you may have just blogged about.
We include this functionality into all our new online stores to help owners in developing and targeting their content.
Labels: Google, Search-Engine-Optimisation, SEO, Web-Design-Melbourne
Posted on Monday, July 02, 2007
Apple iPhone
We watched Steve Jobs give his keynote address at Macworld earlier this year (online) where he revealed the Apple iPhone. While it's not here in Australia just yet, the benefit is that we will get a better product as a result.
There were basically two views on the iPhone. Those who saw the possibilities and those who saw the limitations. Regardless of where you sat, for a first generation product, a new standard has been set for user interface (UI) on mobile phones.
Touch screen in nothing new - but the way in which it has been applied is revolutionary. One example is the keyboard - if you get a chance, watch this video from the Apple website (stick with it, around half way through it gets pretty amazing). It highlights, just how software should be written - with the user in mind.
Apple has just done for mobiles what it has been doing for computers over the last 10 years - making it dead simple. If you think about the head start that all the major phone manufacturers have had - it's sad to see so little variation in their offerings and so little innovation. To give you a quick example, Mark's mobile rang the other day - and although I've been using mobiles for 15 years, it took me about 5 seconds to work out which button I needed to press to answer it. Imagine if I had to do something more complex with it...
The iPhone will change people's expectations about technology. This is not limited to mobiles, but everything from cars to ATMs, even the humble TV remote control.
Through the iPod, Apple gave a wider market a glimpse into the power of well thought through design and simple usability. With the iPhone, people are going to be asking "why didn't a phone company think of this first - this is how it should be".
If you're using a Windows PC, chances are you'll ask the same questions when you switch to a Mac.
We're all looking forward to having the iPhone in Australia.
David
Picture: Reuters: Shannon Stapleton
Labels: iPhone-Australia
Posted on Sunday, July 01, 2007