Wayne (et al), You have just initiated a big discussion. I'd be willing to call it huge. I believe you have also jumped to solution a little too quickly. I don't believe main page and landing page redesign is going to be the optimal way to achieve what we are after. Information / Site design needs to be driven by the next iteration of requirements and page design may be a small part of meeting the requirements. You touch on the requirements in this post; ability to be notified of changes, project nodes, search engine optimization, I am sure their are other important requirements to this next phase of WE.
I believe we need to go through an open requirements (user stories) gathering phase and come to agreement which of these stories are most important and then build toward that set of requirements (features). I believe an Agile software engineering approach could be well applied here. I believe our current goal is in encouraging the development of OER content and its use and reuse. We need this content to become a part of the internet's OER "ecosystem". I believe WE needs to become a platform that encourages Communities of Practice clustering around project nodes and subject areas. I believe page design is a small part of this. I believe we would have better results in focusing on changes / enhancements that tie WE into these communities. Anyhow, that's my $0.02 worth. I could add more, but that can wait until we have an agreed upon next step. Sorry if I have taken a simple main page redesign idea into something bigger. Sincerely, Peter On Mar 5, 8:28 pm, Wayne Mackintosh <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi everyone > > Open questions: > > 1) Should WE redesign its homepage and important landing pages? > 2) Will improved information design of the WE main page and important > landing pages improve retention? > 3) Should WE form a working group to consider proposals for Website > redesign? > 4) If so -- do we have any volunteers who will put their hands up in > thinking about redesigning the website? (Especially folk who have good > experience in this area -- but everyone is most welcome to give a hand). > > A little background info > > Website referrals and direct traffic account for 26% of our total visits > with search engine referrals making up the balance. On average visitors > to WE view 3.62 pages per visit. What's interesting is that our home > page makes up only 3% of our total page views -- suggesting that folk do > find specific content pages in the wiki. > > Other top ranked pages, include, for instance: > > * The recent changes pagehttp://www.wikieducator.org/Special:RecentChanges > * The Content page which lists content > projectshttp://www.wikieducator.org/Content > * The India national page nodehttp://www.wikieducator.org/India > * The Iniatives page which lists projects in the > wikihttp://www.wikieducator.org/Initiatives > * The Otago Polytechnic sales and marketing course > pagehttp://www.wikieducator.org/Sales_and_Marketing > * The eXe online manualhttp://www.wikieducator.org/Online_manual > * A lesson on Forms of Energy developed by the HOD of Technology > Education, University of Education, Winneba in > Ghanahttp://www.wikieducator.org/Lesson_1:_Forms_of_Energy_and_Energy_Tran... > > It's risky to postulate definitive conclusions based on these stats but > I guess its reasonable to say: > > 1. Educators are interested in monitoring and observing changes in the > wiki > 2. Important landing pages include content listings, WE > initiatives/projects and national project nodes > 3. Individual content projects in WE do attract significant traffic. > > What does this mean for the information design of our site? --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
