Comments on: Museum of London and social software: research methodology for analysing effectiveness of Museum blog http://www.mymuseumoflondon.org.uk/blogs/blog/museum-of-london-and-social-software-research-methodology-for-analysing-effectiveness-of-museum-blog/ A sneak peak into the working life of a museum Fri, 10 Feb 2012 13:24:50 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Bilkis Mosoddik http://www.mymuseumoflondon.org.uk/blogs/blog/museum-of-london-and-social-software-research-methodology-for-analysing-effectiveness-of-museum-blog/comment-page-1/#comment-10208 Bilkis Mosoddik Wed, 13 Oct 2010 09:34:45 +0000 http://mymuseumoflondon.org.uk/blogs/blog/museum-of-london-and-social-software-research-methodology-for-analysing-effectiveness-of-museum-blog/#comment-10208 Dear Richard, Thank you for your comment. Much of what you said makes sense and actually since my initial research, I have been looking a lot more at our websites and how they are used. You raise a number of really good points and although at this present moment in time, I can't say we are addressing every one of those, I can promise you that we are addressing at least some of those. We are in the final stage of developing a redesigned website that has a new information architecture and consolidating much of our information in a single place. During this process, we are also addressing the, sometimes, conflicts in our different css files and bringing them together as well. This is part of a larger project that brings our collections online and addresses the problem of having various small micro-sites that hold the same data in different formats. We are in what we are calling the phase 2 of the project. Once the new designed and restructured goes live and we iron out any bugs, we shall move on to phase 3, which addresses the microsites. After that, we shall be doing a full evaluation of the site(s) that will ensure that some of the problems you have picked up on is fixed (if it hasn't already been done so in phase 2 and 3). Thanks again for your comment. It is very much appreciated. I have noted the things you mentioned and I will be adding it to my list of things to check for the new site. Regards, Bilkis. Dear Richard,

Thank you for your comment. Much of what you said makes sense and actually since my initial research, I have been looking a lot more at our websites and how they are used.

You raise a number of really good points and although at this present moment in time, I can’t say we are addressing every one of those, I can promise you that we are addressing at least some of those.

We are in the final stage of developing a redesigned website that has a new information architecture and consolidating much of our information in a single place. During this process, we are also addressing the, sometimes, conflicts in our different css files and bringing them together as well.

This is part of a larger project that brings our collections online and addresses the problem of having various small micro-sites that hold the same data in different formats.

We are in what we are calling the phase 2 of the project. Once the new designed and restructured goes live and we iron out any bugs, we shall move on to phase 3, which addresses the microsites. After that, we shall be doing a full evaluation of the site(s) that will ensure that some of the problems you have picked up on is fixed (if it hasn’t already been done so in phase 2 and 3).

Thanks again for your comment. It is very much appreciated. I have noted the things you mentioned and I will be adding it to my list of things to check for the new site.

Regards,
Bilkis.

]]> By: richard @ London Recycling http://www.mymuseumoflondon.org.uk/blogs/blog/museum-of-london-and-social-software-research-methodology-for-analysing-effectiveness-of-museum-blog/comment-page-1/#comment-10207 richard @ London Recycling Tue, 12 Oct 2010 20:07:33 +0000 http://mymuseumoflondon.org.uk/blogs/blog/museum-of-london-and-social-software-research-methodology-for-analysing-effectiveness-of-museum-blog/#comment-10207 Bilkis, I've got to applaud you for this post, your research was very analytical in it's processing of the data. However, I'm hoping that I can add some additional light on your data that you gleaned. Google's got some further nifty tools that help to refine a website. Using tracking data such as "bounce rate", you can see just how long users remained on a site. This data should be fed back into the website's design so that it can be refined further- ie are users clicking out of a site within 30 seconds- in that case look at the pageload speed and keep in mind the fact that home users (your key audience) may be on a slower connection than you. If users log 1-2 pages per visit in a 45 second timeframe, look at the content of the site- is it engaging enough? Is the site easy enough to navigate? Furthermre, take a look at browser capabilities (another nifty feature)- can a large percentage of your users actually see certain things on a page? Is flash disabled (or as you pointed out Javascript). Does your site depend on javascript? It's then worth considering such things as visitors with ie6- this may be a larger issue for home users than business users- and could hinder CSS, html, java and flash (let alone png files!). Now, this is where I start the real criticism- YOUR SITE IS SLOW!!!. Firebug reports a load time of 4.6 seconds for a 5.5 meg broadband connection, based in Cambridge, so I'm geographically local and have good download speed, but the site's got far too much data to load. I see over 30 elements loading on a page and the web server (any server)and my high end intel core2duo macbook pro can only handle 3 requests at a time- consider consolidating your CSS files, using sprites for image files and consolidating javascript files into one file. You need to think about your visitors and how long they have to sit there between page load- it'll reduce your bounce rate and improve your visitor retention! If your visitor numbers are high, (I see some 114,000 per month, which is quite high!), try using a content delivery network- host your images elsewhere, that way, you've got more than one pipe feeding the person visitng the site. However, google shows a bounce rate of 47% which isn't too bad and visitor page views of over 4 1/2- again quite damn good. I'd suggest that the above could quite easily push page views above 5 per visit and your bounce rate closer to 40% (WHY? you're missing out on a percentage of visitors who can't download your content fast enough, so they just click out of your site! Bilkis, I’ve got to applaud you for this post, your research was very analytical in it’s processing of the data. However, I’m hoping that I can add some additional light on your data that you gleaned. Google’s got some further nifty tools that help to refine a website. Using tracking data such as “bounce rate”, you can see just how long users remained on a site. This data should be fed back into the website’s design so that it can be refined further- ie are users clicking out of a site within 30 seconds- in that case look at the pageload speed and keep in mind the fact that home users (your key audience) may be on a slower connection than you. If users log 1-2 pages per visit in a 45 second timeframe, look at the content of the site- is it engaging enough? Is the site easy enough to navigate? Furthermre, take a look at browser capabilities (another nifty feature)- can a large percentage of your users actually see certain things on a page? Is flash disabled (or as you pointed out Javascript). Does your site depend on javascript? It’s then worth considering such things as visitors with ie6- this may be a larger issue for home users than business users- and could hinder CSS, html, java and flash (let alone png files!). Now, this is where I start the real criticism- YOUR SITE IS SLOW!!!. Firebug reports a load time of 4.6 seconds for a 5.5 meg broadband connection, based in Cambridge, so I’m geographically local and have good download speed, but the site’s got far too much data to load. I see over 30 elements loading on a page and the web server (any server)and my high end intel core2duo macbook pro can only handle 3 requests at a time- consider consolidating your CSS files, using sprites for image files and consolidating javascript files into one file. You need to think about your visitors and how long they have to sit there between page load- it’ll reduce your bounce rate and improve your visitor retention! If your visitor numbers are high, (I see some 114,000 per month, which is quite high!), try using a content delivery network- host your images elsewhere, that way, you’ve got more than one pipe feeding the person visitng the site. However, google shows a bounce rate of 47% which isn’t too bad and visitor page views of over 4 1/2- again quite damn good. I’d suggest that the above could quite easily push page views above 5 per visit and your bounce rate closer to 40% (WHY? you’re missing out on a percentage of visitors who can’t download your content fast enough, so they just click out of your site!

]]> By: The working life of Museum of London « fucktorymuseum 2.0 http://www.mymuseumoflondon.org.uk/blogs/blog/museum-of-london-and-social-software-research-methodology-for-analysing-effectiveness-of-museum-blog/comment-page-1/#comment-9587 The working life of Museum of London « fucktorymuseum 2.0 Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:17:55 +0000 http://mymuseumoflondon.org.uk/blogs/blog/museum-of-london-and-social-software-research-methodology-for-analysing-effectiveness-of-museum-blog/#comment-9587 [...] Il già citato Bilkis Mosoddik continua a presentare il suo lavoro di ricerca: l’ultimo post si intitola “Museum of London and social software: research methodology for analysing effectiveness of Mus... [...] [...] Il già citato Bilkis Mosoddik continua a presentare il suo lavoro di ricerca: l’ultimo post si intitola “Museum of London and social software: research methodology for analysing effectiveness of Mus… [...]

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