meetings
Rita
Steve Thomas
Rita
please ignore my last message, I did hit the mouse button
inadvertently ...
As you all know, we had one meeting until now and I wonder, when we
will have the next ... I know I put in dates in our calendar, and I
started the team and the meetings, but I neglected it in the past
weeks.
It would be great if someone else would step up and take over the
organisation of the web team meetings. Squeakland is a community
project, and I want the community be empowered to do things. I think
this can happen through teams like this one. And besides having some
other things to do and lacking time to do everything I would like to,
I also don't want to give the impression to be in charge of
everything.
Please let me know what you think!
Greetings,
Rita
Carlos y Nenny Rabassa
Your explanation is clear and understood.
Maybe meetings at a set time are not the solution for a group of busy people on different time zones.
I am probably not the typical member of the group, so please, take my opinions just for what they are, the opinions of one member only.
It is quite difficult for me to promise to be available on a certain date and time and then to spend one hour or more without having any interruptions or interferences from my side.
On the other hand, answering specific email or group mail messages is quite much easier.
From the name of the group I gather its purpose is to decide what to do to keep up and improve the web site at
Squeakland.org
In recent days I said what I believe is the most important component of the site is the showcases.
Furthermore I said I would like to see the projects in order of the date they were published.
This would accomplish two goals:
- The initial page of the showcases will always be different.
Right now, shown by rank, displays always the same projects.
- A quick visit to the showcase will show us what new projects have been published.
If we are interested in looking at one of them in detail but do not have the time, we may come back later knowing we will find that project at or near the top of the list.
Maybe we could start a discussion on these subjects and then, after a decision is made use the tracker to follow up?
Carlos Rabassa
Volunteer
Plan Ceibal Support Network
Montevideo, Uruguay
Timothy Falconer
You can view the most recent projects by clicking "by date" right now.
Are you saying that you'd rather the "by date" view be default?
I made the "by rank" view default because this is the best for new visitors to the website. They are most likely to see the better projects.
It's a very easy change to switch to showing "by date" instead.
Tim
Rita
On Oct 8, 2:54 pm, Timothy Falconer <tee...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Carlos,
>
> You can view the most recent projects by clicking "by date" right now.
>
> Are you saying that you'd rather the "by date" view be default?
>
> I made the "by rank" view default because this is the best for new visitors to the website. They are most likely to see the better projects.
seems to me that I see the same projects every time. It doesn't give
me the sense that new projects are being uploaded.
So I'm in favor of giving "view by date" as default a try. I also
trust Carlos very much on this, since he is using the showcase
extensively!
Greetings,
Rita
Timothy Falconer
If neither of you think to click "by date" to see the newest stuff, then there's likely a problem with the wording.
Timothy Falconer
On Oct 8, 2010, at 9:03 AM, Rita wrote:
Steve Thomas
Featured Projects
Newest Additions
Timothy Falconer
Carlos y Nenny Rabassa
> Are you saying that you'd rather the "by date" view be default?
Yes.
> I made the "by rank" view default because this is the best for new visitors to the website. They are most likely to see the better projects.
This leads to two other subjects that I believe deserve their own thread:
- What is a good website?
- What is a good Etoys project?
I intend to start them soon.
Carlos Rabassa
Volunteer
Plan Ceibal Support Network
Montevideo, Uruguay
Carlos y Nenny Rabassa
your feeling:
> It doesn't give me the sense that new projects are being uploaded.
is not unique.
I share it and I'm sure a lot of others share it too.
It is very common for small business to start a website and by the time they realize how much it takes to keep it up to date they abandon it.
When we visit a site for the first time our enthusiasm goes down quickly if we realize it is not up to date.
Carlos Rabassa
Volunteer
Plan Ceibal Support Network
Montevideo, Uruguay
Steve Thomas
Carlos y Nenny Rabassa
> ... we receive quite a few more brand new visitors than repeat visitors.
Why?
It is very difficult to answer this question unless we just imagine an answer.
What I imagine is they reach the site and somehow they are disappointed and they don't come back.
Most people in most businesses agree that repeat clients are much better than new ones.
We all need both to keep the business alive and growing.
But the cost of maintaining a current client is by far lower than getting a new one.
Do not forget the word of mouth viral effect.
It only comes from the repeat customers.
It was very noticeable in our website.
We frequently had inquiries from different individuals at the same company.
People liked to brag about their knowledge of the market and of the better websites in front of their co-workers.
Not to go any further, the supermarket we use while in Charlotte, NC goes really out of the way with their customer loyalty incentives.
They are very successful while they pay us for our loyalty with special discounts not available to new customers.
I believe this is a very common practice in many other places.
>
> If neither of you think to click "by date" to see the newest stuff, then there's likely a problem with the wording.
As I said before, the Squeakland website is great, we are only trying to make it better and more useful to all of us.
It is not the wording.
It is that by the time you look at what else could you click, you already confirmed the site is not up to date, said "next" are are in your way to something else outside our site.
Our real estate website used to have the latest update date in a very prominent place in the front page.
We put a lot of effort in making sure that date was always today's or yesterday's.
And sometimes complaint because in some o the smaller communities we covered although we updated the site, there were no new listings.
I found a very common situation among my fellow real estate brokers.
Many of them think that if they spend enough money in paying the best website designer they can find, they can then sit down, relax and just keep track of their profits.
They dream of a mini Amazon.com website.
They expect a home buyer to come to the site, select the best home and click to buy.
Of course, I am exaggerating to make my point.
The way we found the website to work very well for us selling homes was to use it as a repository of the best and most up to date, most honest, with the fewest errors and easy to find information about homes for sale in our area.
But we had to channel the home buyers and sellers to go to our site and help them find the information they wanted right away and with minimum effort.
Example:
We placed ads in the local newspaper with links from their internet edition to the page in our site featuring the advertised home.
We mailed postcards with the website address and had a little picture of the advertised home in the front page with a direct link to the rest of the information about that home.
We kept a very much up to date list of those on the market looking to buy or to sell and who had authorized us to send them emails or postcards.
This is however something we have to be very careful.
We asked the viewers for only the very minimum information about themselves before allowing them to see our information.
Another very common mistake is to ask for too much and not get anyone to sign.
Carlos Rabassa
Volunteer
Plan Ceibal Support Network
Montevideo, Uruguay
Timothy Falconer
On Oct 8, 2010, at 10:29 AM, Carlos y Nenny Rabassa wrote:
> - What is a good website?
Years ago, Immuexa had bookmarks made up with the following text:
WHAT MAKES A GREAT WEBSITE?
Find a list of local websites, visit any five at random, and ask yourself the following:
1. Are you impressed?
Does their site make you want to do business with them?
2. What do they do?
Is the focus of their business made clear from start?
3. Is the site easy to use?
Can you visit every page without getting lost?
4. Is the content current?
Can you even tell if they’re still in business?
Steve Thomas
Timothy Falconer
Timothy Falconer
> Why?
>
> It is very difficult to answer this question unless we just imagine an answer.
>
> What I imagine is they reach the site and somehow they are disappointed and they don't come back.
>
> Most people in most businesses agree that repeat clients are much better than new ones.
Carlos,
It's actually pretty normal for a website to have more new visitors than repeat visitors. Roughly 40% of Squeakland's visitors are repeat visitors, which is VERY HIGH for all websites except things like Facebook, etc.
Remember, to someone not actively posting to the Showcase, the reasons for returning to the website are few . . . I imagine that most people show up, have a look, download Etoys, and come back only when they have a problem. Most software sites are like this ... DOWNLOAD is the big attraction.
My point was to highlight the importance for good projects to be highlighted to people that don't know about Etoys yet. Those 60% that have never been to the website will likely want to see a representative sampling of projects. By favoring the most recent only, it's essentially random whether they'll get good ones or not.
I like Steve's idea of highlighting both ... on both the home page and the first showcase page.
Timothy Falconer
It's 60% of VISITS are from new people, not 60% of VISITORS are new.
The percentage of new visitors is necessarily much higher than this.
Timothy Falconer
We call this "signs of life" and it's something we stress with all of our web clients.
The current signs of life for Squeakland are on the home page ... blog posts & weekly wow & squeakers list.
The squeakers lists shows a random one, so this appears fresh. The blog post is only as fresh as the most recent blog post. The weekly wow (when it isn't broken as it is now) is also fresh.
The other pages besides the showcase that get stale are:
News / Newsletter (intended to be quarterly ... last one was Fall 2009)
News / Calendar (looks current)
News / Press (current as of squeakfest)
You'll note these are all "news", ie ... should be new.
We never put callouts on the home page for anything but blog primarily because Kim was worried about having to update things. If you don't have new content, it's best not to show that prominently :)
Tim
Carlos y Nenny Rabassa
thanks for sharing this excellent list.
Needless to say I like point
> 4. Is the content current?
>
> Can you even tell if they’re still in business?
It is what I had just said earlier.
I gather your list is for websites in general.
Now we are talking of Squeakland.org only.
This should make it easier to target the conditions to our specific case.
> 1. Are you impressed?
>
> Does their site make you want to do business with them?
I don't think we will ever impress anyone that much, no matter how much money, effort and professionalism is put into it.
We are not in internet to impress anyone, we are here to help.
The biographies and backgrounds that appear in the site I think are excellent and impressive.
But they will find them later on, not on a first visit.
I would like the visitor to see a project as my first goal for their first of many visits.
On the first visit we have to impress them with our efficiency in helping them find what they need and giving effective answers.
Hopefully the impressive background of those associated with Squeakland will be discovered later, and better appreciated.
Hopefully they will see the credentials of those in our group after they are wondering who are these people that do these very much interesting and valuable things.
Again, you might be thinking more of attracting new people.
I am thinking more of servicing the ones we have already attracted to the Etoys world and specifically to the website.
I believe we both have a valid point that has to be considered.
> 2. What do they do?
>
> Is the focus of their business made clear from start?
I believe it is.
All the recent ideas I heard in the group, the letter for Uruguay and other items, I believe will convince us all that the site is strong in this respect.
Even new people I believe will get there with at least a bit of knowledge, interest or at least curiosity about Squeakland / Etoys.
I'm afraid the site is not a promotion tool but a place where to base and center all our other efforts.
Squeakland does:
Squeakfests.
Publishes projects.
Publishes educational materials.
Has two forums in three languages.
Has deployments in many countries.
We all have conversations with lots of people: one to one, one to many, face to face meetings, via forums and emails, answering requests for help, making large and even very small presentations, meetings like the uruguayan volunteers have at community centers every week where people go to ask questions, to get help, to get acquainted.
All these activities should produce visitors to the website.
Once there hopefully there will be some jumping from the original place that attracted the visitor to somewhere else within the site.
> 3. Is the site easy to use?
>
> Can you visit every page without getting lost?
It would be very nice if we could get people to come to the site, explore and learn.
But even much more modest goals should make us very happy.
Through all the channels mentioned in 2. above, I believe each one of us should guide people to go as directly as possible to the information they need.
A typical case I envision is to point to a specific project in the showcase to illustrate our answer to a question received.
This is why it is important the showcase works well.
It is important links from the outside like from one of our emails do not fail.
A few years ago whatever you read about marketing and advertising used to mention the power of viral marketing.
As a real estate broker I learned this technique in the nineties from a couple of priests in our area.
They had an excellent website for their school and, among other things published works by the students.
They came to us to talk at our meeting of the local chapter of the National Association of Realtors.
They were a big hit and, funny, priests teaching real estate brokers how to make money!
Seems to be a situation similar to school kids teaching their teachers how to use the XO.
The priests even had figures of the average number of high quality visitors each work published would attract to their website.
Each student has family, friends and neighbors.
The pride of showing his recognized work will drive the student through the effort of making sure everyone in his sphere of influence sees the work and, consequentially the website.
Parents see the excitement of this students.
All kids would of course like to attend the school and get a good shot at seen their work published on the web for everyone to see.
I see no reason why the same thing could not happen with the Squeakland site.
I have seen that happen in many cases.
You might have noticed an increase in the number of projects and the number of squeakers from Uruguay.
Carlos Rabassa
Volunteer
Plan Ceibal Support Network
Montevideo, Uruguay
Carlos y Nenny Rabassa
Roughly 40% of Squeakland's visitors are repeat visitors, ...
to someone not actively posting to the Showcase, the reasons for returning to the website are few . . . I imagine that most people show up, have a look, download Etoys, and come back only when they have a problem. Most software sites are like this ... DOWNLOAD is the big attraction.
...the reasons for returning to the website are few . . .
Most software sites are like this ... DOWNLOAD is the big attraction.
Carlos y Nenny Rabassa
>
> We never put callouts on the home page for anything but blog primarily because Kim was worried about having to update things.
I agree very much with this concern.
Keeping a site up to date means a lot of work.
But one of the good news about the site is that we keep getting new projects.
I believe we still have to spread more the word that publishing is now much easier than it used to be.
This is something we all can do.
Not only it is now easier but also much more rewarding to new publishers such as the few teachers in Uruguay who adventured into sharing one of their projects.
Now as soon as you publish you will know if you did it right or wrong.
And there is nothing better than an email from someone else other than the author talking in a public forum about a recently published project.
In the real estate site we could announce to the homeowner who was selling, our client, a big jump in visitors at each event around the listing for their home.
Whenever we sent a postcard, whenever we run an email campaign, whenever we had an open house.
The equivalent of a new house listing would be a new project or a forthcoming event or a piece of news such as Uruguay becoming #1 in number of Squeakers (stay tuned, it will happen soon).
Once again, we are trying to resolve everything through the website and your efforts, Tim.
All the news items you mentioned are great, provided they are up to date and, it is not easy to keep them up to date.
What in my opinion is one of the easiest ways to send visitors is for each one of us to send as many visitors as frequently as possible with a good reason for them to go there and with an easy link for them to find whatever it is we are talking about in the website.
So far I had talked about sending visitors to see projects.
Same reasoning is valid for sending a visitor to see a news item.
Or to direct them to specific educational material or, to download the software.
Carlos Rabassa
Volunteer
Plan Ceibal Support Network
Montevideo, Uruguay