Comments on: Toward an Effective Understanding of Website Users http://www.tofp.org/blog/?p=235 a companion site to the OpenFiction Project. Wed, 08 Sep 2010 03:51:05 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 By: OpenFiction [ Blog ] » Intentional traffic http://www.tofp.org/blog/?p=235#comment-21544 OpenFiction [ Blog ] » Intentional traffic Tue, 20 Mar 2007 13:17:37 +0000 http://www.tofp.org/blog/?p=235#comment-21544 [...] Anyway, reading it right after reading the report, I found several passages that spoke to the issues raised regarding web surveys and what they represent. The first passage recounts the aha moment that Bill Gross had for his paid search engine GoTo.com, which presaged the Google AdWords system: Put simply, it’s not the quantity of traffic, Gross realized, it’s the quality. Any business would be willing to pay a lot more than seven to ten cents a click for the right traffic. That realization that became Gross’s eureka moment—a moment that, more than any other, spawned today’s Internet advertising economy. For every single online business (even, it turns out, portals) undifferentiated traffic is worth very little, but specific traffic, traffic with an intent to act in relation to a business’s goods or services [Battelle’s emphasis], is worth quite a lot. Gross realized that businesses will pay quite a bit to acquire the right kind of traffic. All he had to do was build an engine that created intentional traffic. [...] [...] Anyway, reading it right after reading the report, I found several passages that spoke to the issues raised regarding web surveys and what they represent. The first passage recounts the aha moment that Bill Gross had for his paid search engine GoTo.com, which presaged the Google AdWords system: Put simply, it’s not the quantity of traffic, Gross realized, it’s the quality. Any business would be willing to pay a lot more than seven to ten cents a click for the right traffic. That realization that became Gross’s eureka moment—a moment that, more than any other, spawned today’s Internet advertising economy. For every single online business (even, it turns out, portals) undifferentiated traffic is worth very little, but specific traffic, traffic with an intent to act in relation to a business’s goods or services [Battelle’s emphasis], is worth quite a lot. Gross realized that businesses will pay quite a bit to acquire the right kind of traffic. All he had to do was build an engine that created intentional traffic. [...]

]]> By: Stephen Carson http://www.tofp.org/blog/?p=235#comment-21396 Stephen Carson Mon, 19 Mar 2007 16:56:39 +0000 http://www.tofp.org/blog/?p=235#comment-21396 Just a clarification on the issue Patrick mentions above. I did fix the issue Stephen encountered, which was the system was not set to accept registrations for comments. Patrick was able to register and submit a comment, but I have all comments set to require manual approval as a spam check. I usually get two or three spam comments submitted each week, even with Akismet set up. If any WordPress users have suggestions for a more user-friendly approach, please do let me know. Just a clarification on the issue Patrick mentions above. I did fix the issue Stephen encountered, which was the system was not set to accept registrations for comments. Patrick was able to register and submit a comment, but I have all comments set to require manual approval as a spam check. I usually get two or three spam comments submitted each week, even with Akismet set up. If any WordPress users have suggestions for a more user-friendly approach, please do let me know.

]]> By: Open Content Holistic Research Environment http://www.tofp.org/blog/?p=235#comment-21394 Open Content Holistic Research Environment Mon, 19 Mar 2007 16:17:33 +0000 http://www.tofp.org/blog/?p=235#comment-21394 [...] March 19th, 2007 I have just been looking at Steve Carson’s blog at the OpenFiction Project. In particular a post on Toward an Effective Understanding of Website Users a paper by Diane Harley. I felt both the paper and the blog entry made very good points and so I wanted to make a comment, but in the end failed. Looking back I was not the first to have failed as Stephen Downes had had some trouble commenting on an earlier post. I have therefore followed Stephen’s example and made the comment here on my blog. Not such a famous place so not sure it will ever get read! [...] [...] March 19th, 2007 I have just been looking at Steve Carson’s blog at the OpenFiction Project. In particular a post on Toward an Effective Understanding of Website Users a paper by Diane Harley. I felt both the paper and the blog entry made very good points and so I wanted to make a comment, but in the end failed. Looking back I was not the first to have failed as Stephen Downes had had some trouble commenting on an earlier post. I have therefore followed Stephen’s example and made the comment here on my blog. Not such a famous place so not sure it will ever get read! [...]

]]> By: Patrick http://www.tofp.org/blog/?p=235#comment-21390 Patrick Mon, 19 Mar 2007 16:00:26 +0000 http://www.tofp.org/blog/?p=235#comment-21390 Hi Steve, Thank you very much for this post which pointed me towards a very interesting paper. On the openlearn site (http://www.open.ac.uk/openlearn) I have been reluctant to push a questionnaire because it won't tell us about many in our audience. However just recently we used the access statistics to help us find some of those who had made significant use of the site. When people register we also ask if they are prepared to be approached for research purposes. So we used these in combination to select a deliberately biased sample who were asked to complete the questionnaire. These users will not be typical of the site but we certainly managed to get informative and useful replies from them. I guess this supports your statement "No, the survey results don’t represent all of the traffic to the site, but I’m not sure that information is worth having anyway." Patrick. Hi Steve,
Thank you very much for this post which pointed me towards a very interesting paper. On the openlearn site (http://www.open.ac.uk/openlearn) I have been reluctant to push a questionnaire because it won’t tell us about many in our audience. However just recently we used the access statistics to help us find some of those who had made significant use of the site. When people register we also ask if they are prepared to be approached for research purposes. So we used these in combination to select a deliberately biased sample who were asked to complete the questionnaire. These users will not be typical of the site but we certainly managed to get informative and useful replies from them. I guess this supports your statement “No, the survey results don’t represent all of the traffic to the site, but I’m not sure that information is worth having anyway.”

Patrick.

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