Utah Open Source Planet

This post is my 200th post, so I thought I would focus on traffic for my blog. Since I moved my blog to my own server using WordPress, I’ve noticed that I don’t have nearly as much traffic as I did with Blogger. At first I thought that it may be a simple case of people not following my link to the new site, or people just not interested in my posts. Both is quite likely.

So, I thought I would check out my Google Analytics for both sites and compare the data, just to see what I may be doing wrong in regards to my WordPress site vs. the original Blogger site. The numbers are really interesting:

	WordPress Results	Blogger Results
Visits	208	2,050
Page Views	306	2,313
Pages Per Visit	1.47	1.13
Bounce Rate	72.60%	91.02%
Average Time On Site	00:03:08	00:00:28
New Visits	52.40%	94.39%

As you can see, the numbers are quite different, equaling out in weight. While the Blogger site still gets more hits over the period of a year, the WordPress site keeps visitors longer, provides a higher likelihood of additional page views, and has a lower bounce rate.

For me, while I may have lost a lot of visitors, I have gained readership. How? By keeping more people on the site and reading my posts. For me, that is far more valuable and flattering than thousands of people visiting over a month, but no one reading anything I post. It’s actually pretty exciting! Now I wonder how the readership will evolve over time. Will I gain more readers while keeping the bounce rate the same? Perhaps I will increase the average time on the site with more interesting content.

I’m glad I moved from Blogger, if for nothing else than having a control specimen to compare my new site against. Now I can more objectively determine how well my blog is doing, and in what areas.

by Jeremy at 9:44 PM under analysis , blog , numbers (Comments)

I've been using Macs for quite a while now, on and off, and I have noticed that there is just one thing that has made Apple dependent on Microsoft: Excel. Sure, you can install Open Office and use it, but it doesn't have Apple's flare for the dramatic, the sleek, the sexy. Instead, it has been very, very functional (hopefully that has covered both sides of the argument).

I have long thought that the best thing Apple could do is create a rival to Excel that was easy to use. When Office 2007 came out, I noticed that Microsoft had the same idea. So they decided to make a suite that was easy to use, and I still took 2 weeks with a manual to read up on how to use the blasted thing.

Well, with the announcement of the new iMacs (which I have been expecting for some time), Apple also announced a new addition to iWork: Numbers. Yes, Apple finally has their spreadsheet program, and by all accounts it looks and sounds really nice. It's supposed to make manipulating numbers as fun as using iPhoto or iMovie.

I say supposed to, because that's what Keynote and Pages were supposed to do. I've used both, and still use them for design, but as their tools are not familiar to me, I don't use them exclusively. Instead, I use the Microsoft Suite for Powerpoint, and I just started using Google Docs and Spreadsheets for everything else.

Will I try Numbers? You bet! It's something that I have been waiting for since iWork was announced. But will I use it exclusively? That all depends on just how easy it is to use. I'm not, in spite of some accusations from friends, a Mac snob. I'm quite happy to use any other application out there that is useful, or any other platform that meets my needs. After all, I bought Parallels to run Ubuntu and Windows XP. It all comes down to need. But I would rather stick with one platform for simplicity's sake.

Anyway, if you want more information about iWork 2008, there is a press release article here. Also, while you are in the neighborhood, check out the new iMacs. They look really sweet. ^_^

by Jeremy Robb at 10:07 AM under apple , iwork , numbers

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