Per Swenson
Member
- Joined
- Jan 16, 2007
- Messages
- 875
Musta been my imagination ;D
minimal said:Hm, as a registered lurker here, who *loves* the forum (I read it sometimes every day, otherwise
every week), I have to ask this:
How will guests know how valuable it is to join if they can't read the forum?
A simple list of the benefits will not do it. At least for me, I had to be drawn into a discussion,
and the only way to do that is to be able to read more than a few threads, top to bottom.
It took me a few weeks of lurking before I registered ( I think it probably was when I first *had*
to see someone's homebuilt MFT).
What I'm saying here is that in order to increase membership, see what makes people cross over
from guest to member. A poll, perhaps:
Why did you sign up instead of remain a guest?
a: wanted to view image reserved for members
b: wanted to participate in discussion thread
c: wanted to ask question of an experienced member
d: wanted to ask question about upcoming tool purchase
e: wanted to show my festool-related work and get comments
f: am a dealer, wanted to expand references and help people use the tools
g: wanted to join in bickering for sense of comraderie
h: couldn't read anything, just wanted to see what forum was about
For me it was either A or B, I forget. But there's no way I would have joined "on faith", there are
just too many sites and (sadly) in this day & age the ones that make you register first are
almost always the ones that aren't so good. That would have been a total loss for me, as
I've learned so much here, but I wouldn't have know what i was missing, and that
gets to the crux: the person who doesn't register has to know what they are missing, otherwise
there will be no reason to register. And they can't know what they are missing if they can't see
glimpses of the forum.
minimal said:And this is the only alias I lurk under, if Per is implying otherwise; my ideas can't the *that* unoriginal!
pmkierst said:A place to start might be the Wikipedia entry for Web Analytics.
As is typical, google offers a good, free solution that you might want to experiment with, Google analytics.
I tend to use the terms metrics, I'm some kinda old fool.
Matthew Schenker said:I just took a look at Google Analytics. The problem is, to use it I have to uninstall the tracking devices I am already using, which means major headaches on the database end of things. The existing tools (metrics) may not be as good as Google's, but they are all in place and functioning properly. Also, Google Analytics wants me to install their tracking script on every page of this site! I might try this on the Test Forum first, to see how it goes.
Matthew
graphex said:I'm not sure why you'd have to uninstall your other tracking devices. I've used google analytics in conjunction with other statistical engines without problem. Their tracking script is lightweight and usually just goes in your footer control. In my tests, it often performed faster than my webserver I was testing, so the HTML would load, and while the images were on the way the google analytics script would load. The use of google charts makes google analytics pretty slick, if you like looking at metrics from a bunch of angles.
Note: We recommend that you do not include both tracking code snippets together on any given page. Doing so might generate inaccurate report data. You can, however, migrate select pages of your site to the new tracking code while the legacy code remains on others.