Subject: Where Web users come from From: outings@netcom.com (Steve Outing) Date: Tue, 4 Jul 1995 14:50:01 -0700

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Totally unscientific, anecdotal data coming ... FWIW.

My Commercial Online Newspaper Services Resource Directory (a.k.a. MediaInfo 
Interactive) was recently moved to a different server, where I have access to 
some better stats on who uses the site. (URL is http://www.mediainfo.com/edpub)

I was quite interested to note that the top 2 domains for visiting the site 
were prodigy.com followed by aol.com. It surprised me that 1) my audience -- 
primarily newspaper industry folks and others working in new media -- would 
be using the commercial online services so much, and 2) aol.com's Web browser 
is getting so much use when it's still in beta and has (reportedly) many 
problems. This would indicate to me that once AOL gets the bugs out of its 
browser and releases the real thing, Web sites are going to get a BIG boost 
in traffic. 

To follow up on recent comments here about text-vs.-graphics, 75% of my visitors 
hit the home page with graphics turned ON. (As an industry resource, my site 
isn't too dependent on graphics.) What's interesting is that the home page has 
5 graphics (logos for Editor & Publisher and my company, plus 1 sponsor logo). 
The first graphics that draw on the page get the highest hits, then they 
drop off slightly so that 69% (of all visitors) see the logo at the bottom 
-- which happens to be a sponsor logo. My guess is that some folks go to 
another page before the entire page draws, and a very small percentage hit 
the Stop button to prevent all the graphics from drawing. I find it encouraging 
that most people still see my logos; and of course the rest see the ALT 
wording. 

I'd be interested in others' experience.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Outing                                  Planetary News
outings@netcom.com                            El Cerrito, California
owner-online-newspapers@marketplace.com       voice: 510-236-2119
owner-online-news@marketplace.com             fax: 510-236-2118
            http://www.mediainfo.com/edpub/e-papers.outing.html
--------Author: 1995 Online Newspaper Report; 800-488-4345 to order--------



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