[PLUG-TALK] Use of web site statistics

[Rich Shepard]

On Sat, 27 May 2017, Aaron Burt wrote:

> First: As a narrow-minded sysadmin, I never had the opportunity to learn
> modern web ("front end") design, and now I want to. How did you go about
> it?

   Paul Mullen offered much valuable advice. Yet, my main source of
information is the w3school <www.w3schools.com> which I augmented with a
dozen or so more specific web pages on html5, css3, and javaScript. The w3c
validator service <https://validator.w3.org/> is a necessity for catching
the html and css syntax errors we miss.

> Second: Web analytics are odd, log-based ones even more so.  I'd recommend
> you add a JavaScript web-bug (e.g. Google Analytics) to help calibrate,
> and correct for caching.
>
> If you really want to, you can make deductions about your visitors by
> spying on their cookies, but generally you'd use analytics to deduce what
> pages are more or less popular (and improve the less popular ones.)

> If you have a goal in mind for visitors (generate a contact, make a sale)
> you can use "funnel" analytics to see which routes and pages are more
> effective in steering visitors to that goal. You can also use referrer
> information to find out how folks get to your site, and use that to guide
> your outreach.

   Good advice, Aaron. Thanks.

> Third: How's the CGI thing coming along?

   I hope to finish it this weekend (after power washing the driveway and
vehicles, mowing, and weeding).

Regards,

Rich