Summary
The website is running smoothly and consistently, and we are now seeing a stabilization of the number of visits. Content analysis shows that the website plays its role as a portal for news and announcements (upcoming conferences and recent news are among the most viewed pages). The next stages of development will focus on hosting of conference sub-sites and lecture videos.
The Online Committee expects to operate close to its annual budget for 2011.
Analytics
The last five months of web traffic show over 300 visits / day with 59.95% from search engines, 22.73% from direct traffic, and 17.30% from referring sites. The table below compares various analytics between the six-month periods of 09/01/2009-02/05/2010 and 09/01/2010-02/05/2011.
| Statistic | Current | Previous | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Visits | 41,346 | 45,121 | -8.37% |
| Pageviews | 117,608 | 137,497 | -14.47% |
| Pages/Visit | 2.84 | 3.05 | -6.66% |
| Bounce Rate | 59.18% | 58.95% | +0.38% |
| Avg. Time | 2:31 | 2:23 | +5.13% |
| New Visits | 50.89% | 51.98% | -2.11% |
All of the above statistics may be self explanatory except for bounce rate , which is the percentage of single-page visits. The growth in visits overall is encouraging; other number suggest that the community has grown a bit more accustomed to the site over time.
Of 160 countries represented in the past six months, the top 20 countries in terms of visits are summarized in the following table.
| Country | Current | Previous | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| USA | 13,311 | 15,584 | -14.59% |
| China | 2,507 | 2,244 | +11.72% |
| Canada | 2,327 | 2,691 | -13.53% |
| India | 2,145 | 2,452 | -12.52% |
| Iran | 1,750 | 1,659 | +5.49% |
| Germany | 1,700 | 1,566 | +8.56% |
| France | 1,657 | 1,931 | -14.19% |
| Japan | 1,346 | 1,384 | -2.75% |
| United Kingdom | 994 | 1,126 | -11.72% |
| South Korea | 957 | 1,375 | -30.40% |
| Greece | 856 | 910 | -5.93% |
| Turkey | 819 | 533 | +53.66% |
| Taiwan | 754 | 849 | -11.19% |
| Australia | 737 | 736 | +0.14% |
| Sweden | 684 | 571 | +19.79% |
| Spain | 660 | 566 | +16.61% |
| Israel | 579 | 851 | -31.96% |
| Hong Kong | 579 | 514 | +12.65% |
| Switzerland | 562 | 615 | -8.62% |
| Russia | 529 | 561 | -7.70% |
| Page name | Pageviews |
|---|---|
| information for authors | 3,328 |
| 2010 school | 2,571 |
| upcoming conferences | 2,097 |
| 2009 school | 1,538 |
| news item | 1,248 |
Software Development
In 2011, the Online Committee will pursue the efforts initiated in 2010 to increase the visibility of new content in the website. The two main goals for 2011 are to roll over two features to the website: conference objects and embedded videos.
Conference Objects
- Current status. Presently, the website allows us to host static content as sub-websites. This feature is being used for the second time to host the website of the School of Information Theory. The current infrastructure makes it particularly easy to archive content; for instance, the url http://www.itsoc.org/school now points to the 2011 School of Information Theory while the 2010 School website has been provided with the legacy url http://www.itsoc.org/school2010.
- Features to be rolled over in the next few weeks. Based on the experience obtained with the 2009 and 2010 School of information theory websites, new features have been added to sub-websites. In particular, it will be possible to include news items for the sub-website (which could propagate to www.itsoc.org if desired) and to include a slideshow to highlight the main events (keynote speakers, etc.). These features are currently begin reviewed for quality control and will be released in the next few weeks; it is expected to use them for the 2011 School of Information Theory website.
- Next stages of software development. The next round of software development will allow sub-websites to have customizable templates. The specifications have already been communicated to SixFeetUp and development will start once the previous features are rolled over to the main website.
Embedded Videos
Guidelines and Tutorials