How do you keep users engaged? At the very start I thought it’ll be wonderful if I can just put my email address on the site and visitors would send me their feedback. Then in addition to their feedback, I could also get their email and send them an occassional update etc.
Boy was I naive…
Then I thought, let’s try to be a bit more explicit. I said something to the effect ‘if you want to know when the site is updated please please please give me your email’. This was still lame. Cause I’m pretty sure even I wouldn’t give up my email to just any website!
Today, quite by accident I was reading a Google Blog and came across Friend Connect. Check out their introductory video. I think this is exactly what I need. It allows folk to sign up for the site using their existing IDs on Google, Yahoo, AOL or OpenID! Everyone online probably has at least one of these!
And then, I can also hookup other tools like review boards etc. that is available to folk signed up using Friend Connect.
In case you’re wondering, it’s free and could be deployed in about 10 minutes. So this is live on my site right now! Let’s see if anyone actually signs up. Keeping my fingers crossed!
It’s cool that people are finally visiting the site.
But it’s not so cool that about 60% of users seem to just get to the site and then do nothing else except close the page! How do I know this? One of my better decisions was to install Google Analytics right at the start. This is a free tool provided by Google which gives tons of info on the web sites’ user base; where they are, the browsers they use and in this case how long their visit lasted.
Most visits lasted: 0-10 seconds
| Length of Visit |
Visits |
Percentage of all visitors |
| 0-10 seconds |
196.00 |
57.99% |
| 11-30 seconds |
30.00 |
8.88% |
| 31-60 seconds |
20.00 |
5.92% |
| 61-180 seconds |
33.00 |
9.76% |
| 181-600 seconds |
26.00 |
7.69% |
| 601-1,800 seconds |
26.00 |
7.69% |
| 1,801+ seconds |
7.00 |
2.07% |
The data doesn’t look that bad since the site just over a month old. But the plan is to bring down the number of visitors who stay less than 10 seconds to below the 50% mark. One way to bring this number down is by improving the site’s user interface. The image below shows what the current interface looks like. This is the third iteration. Look out for iteration four!
Now to get those brain cells working on the next UI design improvement!
My website is www.top10reads.com.
It’s a very simple idea and should have been quite easy to build. Or so I thought at the time.
If you work in IT you already know all about scope creep. It’s always that marketing person suggesting one minor feature or that manager who promised a tiny enhancement that they forgot about till the last minute that time and again blow a project out of the water, right?
Well, in this case the new requirement was added by yours truly. My new requirement was to build this website using as much free technology and tools as possible. And yes I do mean free as in free beer and not just free as in open source. After all who can afford to sink money in a new venture when tomorrow could just be a layoff waiting to happen!
It’s been about a month now and I’ve barely made it past the initial launch!
So… are you also interested in developing a web site on a shoestring budget ? Then you’ve come to the right place. I’ll post whatever I learn from this experience, and I sincerely hope that this helps you build your own dream website!