The Story So Far

13 Jan 08 - Toolbox added and site redesign of core elements

Having tried and worked with lots of different Web 2.0 gadgets and services, I have provided a showcase of the best of these in a new Toolbox section on the site. I have grouped these what the specific Tool is trying to help with - i.e. Attract visitors, Engage users, Publish Content, Interact with online users.

I have also taken the opportunity to change a few of my previous design elements. For example, I am now using the AddThis tool to provide bookmarking and social network links - more flexible and gives better info on visitors.

25 August - Some glitches, Web 2.0 video added, helped launch a new site!

Having pushed a few new features earlier in the month, I have had to do some rework on the Google Web 2.0 news feed - stopped working when they changed the feed link! The animated headline from Feedburner has worked great and is a good way to link the site with my blog. Blog sign-ups are rising with the easy    subscribe icons.

I have been fortunate to get Michael Wesch's permission to show his great Web 2.0 video - The machine is Using/Us" as with an embedded YouTube widget. Has been working great but I think I'm getting some bandwidth issues which I need to investigate so be patient if its slow to load.

Lastly, I've helped out a fellow Office Live user get their site up and running - took just 3 days effort in total including submitting to search engines, photos from iStockphoto. Take a look.

6 August - New Features added

The last few weeks have seen a number of changes to the site to build more site traffic and engage visitors. I've set up a feedburner account to manage my blog and included a subcribe button    on most pages together with a windows live option. I did look at a few options for creating RSS feeds but feedburner was the simplest to use / set up and gives users lots of sign-up options. I've also added feedburner's headline animator to my home page and few others to provide some dynamic content.

I've also found a good public news feed on Web 2.0 from Google to republish on my home page. For the Office Live techies amongst you this uses an iFrame with an html document upload.

4 July - Eyeballs and Operations OK but need more 2.0 Professionals

June saw 2500+ page views and 750+ unique users driven from a good mix of search engine, blog and site links. All the web infrastructure put in place to manage site content, blogs and work with clients on-line worked according to plan including the Paypal invoicing cycle, on-line bank account and accounting tools. Although there's obviously alot of interest in the site and the technology works fine, individuals seem to be reluctant to use the various tools available to make contact and share their thoughts. So July will see me trying a few experiments to engage those who visit the site to make contact.

Interest is rising with a major increase in page views and unique users as shown in the Office Live graph below.

Monthly Unique Users - Site Launched 24 May 07

Monitoring this information on Office Live has been really easy with up-to-date graphs like this on unique visitors, views, top search engines, top keywords and most requested pages. It's those exit pages I'm keeping an eye on now to see what can be done to keep visitors on the site longer.

The site has made Microsoft's Office Live and bCentral case studies pages with its use of presence indicators and an on-line survey. Although it took a few days to get indexed with the major search engines and put in place eMarketing with AdWords and the AdManager service within Office Live, activity is now rising with 200 page views this week and 50 unique visitors.