About two months ago, I sat down with a piece of paper, and drew three sqaures on the piece of paper. The piece of paper was entitled “traffic studies and human involvement”. My aim was to come up with three ideas, whether they were unique or recycled ideas, so that I could study website traffic, but more importantly, I wanted to try an get into the mind of the average human who surfs around the Internet ‘aimlessly’. The sites were coded, designed and online a few days later, and my studies started immediately. I now have a A3 piece of paper with various observations jotted down all over it. After sitting with the messy A3 page, I took an A4 page and proceeded to summarize my findings. I am not going to give a complete break down on everything I have observed yet, as I am still compiling a few items, but I want to share one topic specifically, which relates to website traffic, focusing mainly on blogs and human involvement..

I have noticed that blogs usually start with a slight boom, as an author releases a site to the public, the authors interest is large, and a great deal of time is spent spreading the word, emailing friends, submitting to search engines, and any other ’spam’ methods he/she requires (I don’t take kindly to people who spam, but you got to do what you got to do, I guess *shrug*). Anyway, this initial burst of traffic results in hundreds (hopefully) of unique hits to your website, and this fuels more interest in the blogger. The next step is to keep up the writing and content movement, but what often happens is that the spreading of the website dies somewhat, and the unique hits start to decrease, but the number of revisiting readers increases slightly. Over another period of time, let’s say around two to three weeks, traffic seems alright, but starts to decrease slightly, in both cases: unique visits and revisits. At this point, a blogger would usually try pushing again, but if this does not result in success, many people would give up, and the interest in the blog could easily fall away. This point is crucial for any blogger, people visit a website, and if they are interested in the material on the website, hopefully they will return again, but in most cases they will only return again if they see a link to your website, this would trigger the memory (MyBlogLog’s images play a great role in this recognition structure) and they would pop on over again. If this returning visitor now sees that many other people are interested in the site, the chances are that they would become a regular reader on the website, sign up for your newsletter or even subscribe to your RSS feed.. (more…)

I have spoken about MyBlogLog in three different posts:

1. A little MyBlogLog Trick
2. Friends in the Blogisphere
3. Keep your Readers Interested

For those of you who already use MyBlogLog as a social communicating network for bloggers, you will understand exactly what I mean, when I say that the website is fantastic! For those of you who have not, pop on over to MyBlogLog and take a look, because you are missing out in a wonderful community.

I am trying to increase the number of community members I have for Webtrepreneur, so if you are a regular on this website, or are interested in the content I am asking that you would join my community. Joining a community is not a huge commitment, it basically requires you clicking a join button, and that’s it. By joing a community does not suddenly land you with emails or messages all day, it’s almost like bookmarking a website with your browser.

If you would like to join my community, you may do so by clicking here, and clicking on the green button under the Tools category header towards the top right of the website. Join my website, and help spread the knowledge which revolves around monetizing your website efficiently, and effectively!

Thanks,
The Web Entrepreneur

ClickHeat is a visual heatmap of clicks on a HTML page, showing hot and cold click zones. What this means, basically, is that ClickHeat is software, which you install onto your website, it keeps track of where your users are clicking on your website. The software is really easy to install, and once installed, checking where your users are clicking is a click away. The visual heat map gives you a wonderful break down, and allows you to keep track of what your users are interested in. Knowing this allows you to focus on these areas and work in increasing popularity in other areas of the website, or if you are interested in monetizing your website, knowing where your users are clicking will help you with advert placement.

The requirements to run this software involve: Javascript, PHP and Graphic Library GD (PNG support needed). Most web servers cater for the php and library support, and javascript is client side, which involves your browser being able to handle javascript, which is usually not a problem, and will already be organised.

There are three main features, which Labsmedia mention:

- Low logging activity: a very few function calls to log a click, no server load rise should be noticed.
- A keyword is used to define the page upon Javascript code load, allowing you to group same pages.
- Screen sizes and browsers are logged, making possible the tracking of liquid CSS layouts (100% used width).

The labsmedia website has a useful section on performance and optimization, and a well put together Frequently Asked Questions section. Go take a read of these two sections to optimize your uses for ClickHeat. On top of these wonderful resources, a live demo is also available, which gives you a full breakdown on exactly what you are able to achieve with this wonderful addon for your website.

If you would like to download this software, simply click here. For information on installation and upgrading, you may click here.

I have been using ClickHeat for over a week now, and have found the results extremely interesting from many points of view. The software gives you more than just a breakdown of where users are clicking, if you take your time with your results, you can actually start understand human trends, which is the area I have actually found most interesting. Download the software, install it, and enjoy knowing your readers that much better.

Really Simple Syndication (RRS) is a useful (not quite crucial yet) format used by website authors on their websites to allow for Feed Syndication. This allows for an author to have his articles formatted in an universaly understood format. Most web authors these days are using packaged freeware, such as Wordpress, which sets up feed sydications automatically for their website. This saves a large amount of time and effort, and would be what I suggest you use.

Feedburner.com is a fantastic website, which controls your feeds, and should be used by authors. If you want to increase your reader loyalty, Feedburner is a service you should take a look at. Feedburner currently handles over 650,000 feeds, which shows that their services are very successful. The process is very easy, and does not take a long time to setup at all. Load the website in your browser, and you will notice a textbox in the middle of the screen, simply type in your RSS feed URL, and Feedburner, will take over and set up your feed for you. Once the process is complete, you will be given a URL, which links to your feed, and this is the link, which you will show on your website for people to sign up to your feed with. Feedburner also offers statistics for your feeds, as well as a control panel with a collection of useful tools, including subscribe buttons for your website.

Offering feeds from your website, allows people to subscribe to your feed, and receive the new articles the second they are published. With the use of software, a user can subscribe to your feed, and the article will appear in the software, without the user needing to check up on your website constantly. This will also prevent your readers from missing valuable articles. A good piece of software is Feed Demon, award winning RSS Reader. Feed Demon runs in your computers system tray, and checks for muliple feeds on a time based interval, which you may set. Feed Demon is what is known as an aggregator - An aggregator or news aggregator or feed reader is a client software that uses web feed to retrieve syndicated web content such as blogs, podcasts, vlogs, and mainstream mass media websites, or in the case of a search aggregator, a customized set of search results. You may download a trial copy of the software by clicking here.

These days, a website which handles articles, that does not have an RSS feed is missing out in a large number of possible new readers, as well as the loss of reader loyalty. Websites such as Afrigator and Amatomu use feeds to syndicate an websites content on their website, which for an author is free advertising, and well as free back links. I have also spoken about showing feeds on your website using some php code, you can view my article on displaying live feeds from other sites here.

You can read more about RSS Feeds by clicking here.