Re: About FreeBSD.org visitors
On 06/10/2013 05:01, Erich Dollansky wrote: this type is called 'design'. As an engineer I do the software behind an website but I do not dare to make the design. Ok, I tell the designer, when I think the design could be improved but I do not dare th change it myself. The trick is to realise that site design is simply another form of engineering, albeint with rather different contexts and constraints than writing software. Writing a website so that the users can interact with it readily, find and understand what they wat, avoid frustration and have a pleasant overall experience is conceptually much the same sort of thing as writing a website so it doesn't hog server resources or continually fail ungracefully or have a badly indexed sub-optimal database schema. Basically you want it to do it's job efficiently and smoothly, whether 'it' is the back-end server code, or the on-screen presentation. Granted, optimizing sites for human interaction is a whole different skill set, but it's not some holy task that only some annointed designer with the mandate of heaven can undertake. Cheers, Matthew -- Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: About FreeBSD.org visitors
Hi, On Sun, 06 Oct 2013 07:55:10 +0100 Matthew Seaman matt...@freebsd.org wrote: On 06/10/2013 05:01, Erich Dollansky wrote: this type is called 'design'. As an engineer I do the software behind an website but I do not dare to make the design. Ok, I tell the designer, when I think the design could be improved but I do not dare th change it myself. The trick is to realise that site design is simply another form of engineering, albeint with rather different contexts and constraints than writing software. Writing a website so that the users can interact with it readily, find and understand what they wat, avoid frustration and have a pleasant overall experience is conceptually much the same sort of thing as writing a website so it doesn't hog server resources or continually fail ungracefully or have a badly indexed sub-optimal database schema. Basically you want it to do it's job efficiently and smoothly, whether 'it' is the back-end server code, or the on-screen presentation. Granted, optimizing sites for human interaction is a whole different skill set, but it's not some holy task that only some annointed designer with the mandate of heaven can undertake. yes, it is not rocket science but - as you said - a different skill set. Erich ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: About FreeBSD.org visitors
Hi, On Sun, 6 Oct 2013 05:06:02 -0400 Mehmet Erol Sanliturk m.e.sanlit...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Oct 6, 2013 at 3:45 AM, Erich Dollansky erichsfreebsdl...@alogt.com wrote: On Sun, 06 Oct 2013 07:55:10 +0100 Matthew Seaman matt...@freebsd.org wrote: On 06/10/2013 05:01, Erich Dollansky wrote: this type is called 'design'. As an engineer I do the software behind an website but I do not dare to make the design. Ok, I tell the designer, when I think the design could be improved but I do not dare th change it myself. The trick is to realise that site design is simply another form of engineering, albeint with rather different contexts and constraints than writing software. Writing a website so that the users can interact with it readily, find and understand what they wat, avoid frustration and have a pleasant overall experience is conceptually much the same sort of thing as writing a website so it doesn't hog server resources or continually fail ungracefully or have a badly indexed sub-optimal database schema. Basically you want it to do it's job efficiently and smoothly, whether 'it' is the back-end server code, or the on-screen presentation. Granted, optimizing sites for human interaction is a whole different skill set, but it's not some holy task that only some annointed designer with the mandate of heaven can undertake. yes, it is not rocket science but - as you said - a different skill set. Erich http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering The first sentence : *Software engineering* (*SE*) is the application of a systematic, this is the mistake made here. We - at least me - talk about this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_design Nobody mentioned the software behind. Only the search function is mentioned very often as being behind current standards. Erich disciplined, quantifiable approach to the design, development, operation, and maintenance of software http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software, and the study of these approaches; that is, the application of engineeringhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineeringto software.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering#cite_note-BoDu04-1 Thank you very much . Mehmet Erol Sanliturk ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: About FreeBSD.org visitors
Christopher Henderson wrote: Hello Unix Fans, I'm an on again/off again BSD/Linux user. I'll spend a few years in one, then the other, etc. I'm getting the FreeBSD itch again so I visited the website. One big problem for me is that there is no obvious link from the front page listing supported hardware. I finally stumbled upon the release notes but its just a flat text file. Why not HTML? I hated having to scroll through it to find out if my wifi card is supported (Alas, it is not. But OpenBSD supports it.). Yes, I just went that route searching for a driver, hard work, have a look at http://www.berklix.org/~jhs/txt/driver_search.html Turns out one wireless driver (urtwn, Realtek RTL8188CU/RTL8192CU USB IEEE 802.11b/g/n, Belkin F7D1102 Surf Wireless Micro D-Link DWA-131 Edimax EW-7811Un Netgear WNA1000M Realtek RTL8192CU Realtek RTL8188CUS ) was never put in 9 but is in FreeBSD 10 Alpha release, if you'r luck may be the same one I found. I just downloaded a 10 .iso alpha to try. Cheers, Julian -- Julian Stacey, BSD Unix Linux C Sys Eng Consultant, Munich http://berklix.com Reply below not above, like a play script. Indent old text with . Send plain text. No quoted-printable, HTML, base64, multipart/alternative. ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: About FreeBSD.org visitors
On 4/10/2013 1:38 AM, Rodrigo OSORIO wrote: Maybe the question is : have they found what they are looking for ? Thats a good question Rodrigo and right on point. Bounce rates, without also identifying *legitimate* (and/or desirable) exit points cant alone help us determine if a user has achieved their objective or not. Among other things, marking actions on pages with GA labels will differentiate many of these cases from the pathological and begins to place 'our user goals' *first* as the primary definition of success. You cant manage or improve what you dont measure. -- Koobs ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: About FreeBSD.org visitors
Hi, On Sun, 06 Oct 2013 12:17:34 +1100 Kubilay Kocak koobs.free...@gmail.com wrote: On 4/10/2013 1:38 AM, Rodrigo OSORIO wrote: Maybe the question is : have they found what they are looking for ? Thats a good question Rodrigo and right on point. Bounce rates, without also identifying *legitimate* (and/or desirable) exit points cant alone help us determine if a user has achieved their objective or not. I am one of the many 'bounced' users. The front page shows already very often what I want to know. Security notes, the current supported versions and news. Why should I read then things I am not interested in? But there is something missing. There is no 'entry' point for potential new users. Among other things, marking actions on pages with GA labels will differentiate many of these cases from the pathological and begins to place 'our user goals' *first* as the primary definition of success. You cant manage or improve what you dont measure. I disagree here. A website is not a piece of engineering. Erich ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: About FreeBSD.org visitors
On Sat, Oct 5, 2013 at 10:29 PM, Erich Dollansky erichsfreebsdl...@alogt.com wrote: Among other things, marking actions on pages with GA labels will differentiate many of these cases from the pathological and begins to place 'our user goals' *first* as the primary definition of success. You cant manage or improve what you dont measure. I disagree here. A website is not a piece of engineering. Yes it is. Of a different type. Here is an introduction to the topic of Website Engineering: http://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-101-introduction-to-usability/ -- Eitan Adler ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: About FreeBSD.org visitors
On 6/10/2013 1:29 PM, Erich Dollansky wrote: Hi, On Sun, 06 Oct 2013 12:17:34 +1100 Kubilay Kocak koobs.free...@gmail.com wrote: On 4/10/2013 1:38 AM, Rodrigo OSORIO wrote: Maybe the question is : have they found what they are looking for ? Thats a good question Rodrigo and right on point. Bounce rates, without also identifying *legitimate* (and/or desirable) exit points cant alone help us determine if a user has achieved their objective or not. I am one of the many 'bounced' users. The front page shows already very often what I want to know. Security notes, the current supported versions and news. Why should I read then things I am not interested in? You shouldnt, though im intrigued as to who or what gave you the impression that you should? :) But there is something missing. There is no 'entry' point for potential new users. +1 on this point. Additionally, new users are but one dimension of one demographic of a diverse customer base. You want to see understand the forest *and* the trees. Among other things, marking actions on pages with GA labels will differentiate many of these cases from the pathological and begins to place 'our user goals' *first* as the primary definition of success. You cant manage or improve what you dont measure. I disagree here. A website is not a piece of engineering. If by engineering you mean not serving a purely technical endeavour, I can't agree more. Understanding your audience and their goals however, requires effort *and* intentional intrumentation (I use this term intentionally by technical analogy), whether that takes the form of surveys, feedback forms, social engagement, PR's, forums or otherwise. User interaction with our biggest front-of-house is just one more example, and where we can make the biggest impact. Koobs ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: About FreeBSD.org visitors
Hi, On Sun, 06 Oct 2013 15:06:55 +1100 Kubilay Kocak koobs.free...@gmail.com wrote: On 6/10/2013 1:29 PM, Erich Dollansky wrote: On Sun, 06 Oct 2013 12:17:34 +1100 Kubilay Kocak koobs.free...@gmail.com wrote: On 4/10/2013 1:38 AM, Rodrigo OSORIO wrote: Maybe the question is : have they found what they are looking for ? Thats a good question Rodrigo and right on point. Bounce rates, without also identifying *legitimate* (and/or desirable) exit points cant alone help us determine if a user has achieved their objective or not. I am one of the many 'bounced' users. The front page shows already very often what I want to know. Security notes, the current supported versions and news. Why should I read then things I am not interested in? You shouldnt, though im intrigued as to who or what gave you the impression that you should? :) the content of the first e-mail in this threat. It gives the impression that the site is bad because some 50% 'bounce'. But there is something missing. There is no 'entry' point for potential new users. +1 on this point. Additionally, new users are but one dimension of one demographic of a diverse customer base. You want to see understand the forest *and* the trees. Among other things, marking actions on pages with GA labels will differentiate many of these cases from the pathological and begins to place 'our user goals' *first* as the primary definition of success. You cant manage or improve what you dont measure. I disagree here. A website is not a piece of engineering. If by engineering you mean not serving a purely technical endeavour, I can't agree more. I consider the front ends always as design and would never allow an engineer to do one. Let the engineers build the cars but let designers design them. Would you like to drive a car like the Tin Lizzy? Erich ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: About FreeBSD.org visitors
On Sun, Oct 6, 2013 at 12:31 AM, Erich Dollansky erichsfreebsdl...@alogt.com wrote: the content of the first e-mail in this threat. It gives the impression that the site is bad because some 50% 'bounce'. Mea Culpa. My entire email was meant to be informative and provoke questions - not to say that any one stat was good or bad. I did not mean to imply that bounce = bad. I consider the front ends always as design and would never allow an engineer to do one. Let the engineers build the cars but let designers design them. Would you like to drive a car like the Tin Lizzy? Design needs to be driven by data. -- Eitan Adler ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: About FreeBSD.org visitors
Hello Unix Fans, I'm an on again/off again BSD/Linux user. I'll spend a few years in one, then the other, etc. I'm getting the FreeBSD itch again so I visited the website. One big problem for me is that there is no obvious link from the front page listing supported hardware. I finally stumbled upon the release notes but its just a flat text file. Why not HTML? I hated having to scroll through it to find out if my wifi card is supported (Alas, it is not. But OpenBSD supports it.). That is my only real complaint. The general design hasn't changed since the 90s when I first discovered FreeBSD 3.3 but I don't see that as a bad thing. The NetBSD site was in bad need of an overhaul. I like the new look. On a final note, I have a BSD tattoo if anyone is interested. I don't know if it is appropriate to share a picture on this thread. Sincerely, ~Christopher On Thursday, October 03, 2013 11:14:48 AM Eitan Adler wrote: Here is an overview of the people that visit FreeBSD.org: http://people.freebsd.org/~eadler/files/Report-10.01.pdf Some takeaways: - More than half (60%) the people that come to our website leave without going to another page (called 'bouncing'). However these users spend more time than any other user per page. - Non-bouncing users had an average of just over 4 pages per session but spent about an average of 0.86/s per page. They spend most of their time on the last page. From these I think we can take away that most people come looking for something very specific. How can we fix this? Better search maybe? Improved navigation bar? Its up to you to work on this. - New users spend a lot *less* time on the site than repeat visitors. Do we need better advocacy data? Less text to confuse new users? Is this trend specific to FreeBSD or is it true across the board? - Internet Explorer is 10% of our traffic. Many of ours users use Windows as there primary desktop platform. Probably more if we include not-IE on Windows. What other insights do you see? What other data might be helpful for us? ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
About FreeBSD.org visitors
Here is an overview of the people that visit FreeBSD.org: http://people.freebsd.org/~eadler/files/Report-10.01.pdf Some takeaways: - More than half (60%) the people that come to our website leave without going to another page (called 'bouncing'). However these users spend more time than any other user per page. - Non-bouncing users had an average of just over 4 pages per session but spent about an average of 0.86/s per page. They spend most of their time on the last page. From these I think we can take away that most people come looking for something very specific. How can we fix this? Better search maybe? Improved navigation bar? Its up to you to work on this. - New users spend a lot *less* time on the site than repeat visitors. Do we need better advocacy data? Less text to confuse new users? Is this trend specific to FreeBSD or is it true across the board? - Internet Explorer is 10% of our traffic. Many of ours users use Windows as there primary desktop platform. Probably more if we include not-IE on Windows. What other insights do you see? What other data might be helpful for us? -- Eitan Adler ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: About FreeBSD.org visitors
On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 7:14 AM, Eitan Adler li...@eitanadler.com wrote: Here is an overview of the people that visit FreeBSD.org: http://people.freebsd.org/~eadler/files/Report-10.01.pdf Some takeaways: - More than half (60%) the people that come to our website leave without going to another page (called 'bouncing'). However these users spend more time than any other user per page. - Non-bouncing users had an average of just over 4 pages per session but spent about an average of 0.86/s per page. They spend most of their time on the last page. This seems normal; they drill down until they find what they want, use it, and then leave. From these I think we can take away that most people come looking for something very specific. How can we fix this? Better search maybe? Improved navigation bar? Its up to you to work on this. - New users spend a lot *less* time on the site than repeat visitors. Do we need better advocacy data? Less text to confuse new users? Is this trend specific to FreeBSD or is it true across the board? - Internet Explorer is 10% of our traffic. Many of ours users use Windows as there primary desktop platform. Probably more if we include not-IE on Windows. What other insights do you see? What other data might be helpful for us? Specifics of which end pages are the popular ones would be enlightening. If we can put ourselves in the shoes of people going to specific pages, we can work on highlighting other content that's useful for their use cases. GA used to provide a graph that showed actual flows, with thicker and thinner flow arrows based on percentage of traffic. Is that still available? Royce ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: About FreeBSD.org visitors
A side suggestion: If the vBulletin Forum archives could be turned off, it would help. Thing is, those archives come up in google results. Many times, people find the archive pages (which are bland) instead of the actual thread. http://forums.freebsd.org/archive/index.php Although the information *is* there, I think it's better to have people see the forums instead of the archives. I've seen this done with other vBulletin forum installations elsewhere, and I think it's good practice. I believe it's in vBulletin Options -- in that list of options, there's one called Search Engine Friendly Archive. Selecting that one, the first option is Forum Archive Enabled, set to No. Here's a reference link: http://www.vbseo.com/f34/how-completely-turn-off-vbulletin-archive-24545/ On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 11:38 AM, Rodrigo OSORIO rodr...@bebik.net wrote: On 03/10/13 16:35 +0100, Anton Shterenlikht wrote: From: Eitan Adler li...@eitanadler.com Date: Thu, 3 Oct 2013 11:14:48 -0400 Subject: About FreeBSD.org visitors To: FBSD Doc project d...@freebsd.org, freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Here is an overview of the people that visit FreeBSD.org: http://people.freebsd.org/~eadler/files/Report-10.01.pdf Some takeaways: - More than half (60%) the people that come to our website leave without going to another page (called 'bouncing'). However these users spend more time than any other user per page. - Non-bouncing users had an average of just over 4 pages per session but spent about an average of 0.86/s per page. They spend most of their time on the last page. From these I think we can take away that most people come looking for something very specific. How can we fix this? Fix what? What is the problem? Maybe the question is : have they found what they are looking for ? Do you have statistics about how often unique users come back ? Anton ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org ___ freebsd-...@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-doc To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-doc-unsubscr...@freebsd.org ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: About FreeBSD.org visitors
On Oct 3, 2013, at 5:14 PM, Eitan Adler li...@eitanadler.com wrote: Here is an overview of the people that visit FreeBSD.org: http://people.freebsd.org/~eadler/files/Report-10.01.pdf Some takeaways: - More than half (60%) the people that come to our website leave without going to another page (called 'bouncing'). However these users spend more time than any other user per page. - Non-bouncing users had an average of just over 4 pages per session but spent about an average of 0.86/s per page. They spend most of their time on the last page. From these I think we can take away that most people come looking for something very specific. How can we fix this? Better search maybe? Improved navigation bar? Its up to you to work on this. - New users spend a lot *less* time on the site than repeat visitors. Do we need better advocacy data? Less text to confuse new users? Is this trend specific to FreeBSD or is it true across the board? - Internet Explorer is 10% of our traffic. Many of ours users use Windows as there primary desktop platform. Probably more if we include not-IE on Windows. What other insights do you see? What other data might be helpful for us? I thought we were going to see what pages are being hit the most, what kind of search patterns people use to find us (and pages we host), so that we can anticipate that there are perhaps searches that we do not provide content with effectively, or that the download and security information pages are being requested most often, so that we can make sure that vital and accurate information is printed there. For me, your PDF does not say anything at all, because the why's cannot be filled in with this information. What were people looking for and what did they hit? Download FreeBSD and getting the page Why contribute to FreeBSD doesn't satisfy the download request so we should adopt it. Nice graphs, useless information (imo). Remko -- Eitan Adler ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org -- /\ With kind regards,| re...@elvandar.org \ / Remko Lodder | re...@freebsd.org XFreeBSD| http://www.evilcoder.org / \ The Power to Serve| Quis custodiet ipsos custodes signature.asc Description: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail
Re: About FreeBSD.org visitors
On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 2:23 PM, Remko Lodder re...@freebsd.org wrote: I thought we were going to see There is a lot more information around. I must ask permission for each and every report I send in public. I already asked to share some tables regarding visitor path, most used pages, etc. Also, I am not an SEO / web page analytics expert. I need more advice on what you want / need to see. -- Eitan Adler ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: About FreeBSD.org visitors
On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 1:34 PM, Eitan Adler li...@eitanadler.com wrote: On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 2:23 PM, Remko Lodder re...@freebsd.org wrote: I thought we were going to see There is a lot more information around. I must ask permission for each and every report I send in public. I already asked to share some tables regarding visitor path, most used pages, etc. Also, I am not an SEO / web page analytics expert. I need more advice on what you want / need to see. I don't have any insight into the numbers presented. I think if there is action to improve them then some accompanying A/B or other testing to valid the results. -- Adam Vande More ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: About FreeBSD.org visitors
On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 2:23 PM, Remko Lodder re...@freebsd.org wrote: On Oct 3, 2013, at 5:14 PM, Eitan Adler li...@eitanadler.com wrote: Here is an overview of the people that visit FreeBSD.org: http://people.freebsd.org/~eadler/files/Report-10.01.pdf Some takeaways: - More than half (60%) the people that come to our website leave without going to another page (called 'bouncing'). However these users spend more time than any other user per page. - Non-bouncing users had an average of just over 4 pages per session but spent about an average of 0.86/s per page. They spend most of their time on the last page. From these I think we can take away that most people come looking for something very specific. How can we fix this? Better search maybe? Improved navigation bar? Its up to you to work on this. - New users spend a lot *less* time on the site than repeat visitors. Do we need better advocacy data? Less text to confuse new users? Is this trend specific to FreeBSD or is it true across the board? - Internet Explorer is 10% of our traffic. A graph of visitor flow and falloff: http://people.freebsd.org/~eadler/files/reports/report-10.01-flow.pdf Which pages people visit and how long they stay there: http://people.freebsd.org/~eadler/files/reports/report-10.01-pages.pdf This is the same report but sorted by most time spent on page and filtered to exclude pages that match ^/cgi http://people.freebsd.org/~eadler/files/reports/report-10.01-most-time.pdf Of note: if you sort by most time spent on page you get man pages -- Eitan Adler ___ freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-advocacy To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-advocacy-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
