This article is a little bit technical and hopefully a little bit fun. I put it together in an effort to teach you about something called a Web log, and how you may use that Web log to see how effective your chiropractic web site may be.
Did you ever wonder if someone else was visiting Planet Chiropractic while you were on the site? Ever wonder if someone else was listening to chiropractic audio or reading the exact news article at the same time you were? Thanks to something called a Web log, we can get some basic information that tells us a little bit about a typical day or period of time on a web site.
Taking a look at the planetc1.com Web logs, a feature available to nearly any web site, it’s easy to see that you have a hunger for chiropractic news as well as for the streaming multimedia this site offers.
In this article I will refer to data gathered on Wednesday January 17th, 2001 so we can capture a look at one day. Let’s first take a look at how many of you came to visit the site that day. Total visitors for Wednesday tallied up at 4,911. (Always try to use visitors as a measurement for your web site activity and not hits, since hits can be very misleading when trying to figure out how many people are actually using your web site) It was a busy day for this site, as are most days that our newsletters are sent, but it was not the busiest ever. Certainly not a busy day when comparing to a site like WebMD.com which can average more than one million visitors per day. But then again, this is not a multibillion dollar funded health-care site. (I wonder if we looked at all the Web logs for all the world’s chiropractic sites, how many visitors would there be? Have a big vision gang!)
So what do most of you like to do while you’re on this site? The vast majority of you head right for the News headlines, scanning for the news of the day. A rapidly growing second choice is the multimedia page, which is increasingly becoming a source of this sites daily traffic. (Traffic is something that’s a good thing if you’re a Webmaster) Although there are only a few featured articles as of yet, you have indicated that you like them and would like to see more. My goal is to have an average of two new featured articles every month, covering particular articles in much greater depth than you currently see on the news pages. OK, back to this Web stuff.
Where are you coming from?
Well first of all, the overwhelming majority of you are in North America, primarily the United States. For nearly any web site, you could look at the Web log to find out what geographic regions people are coming from. It may not always be accurate but it’s neat to look at. So here are the regions that you came from on Wednesday:
North America, Australia, Western Europe, Asia, Pacific Islands, Eastern Europe, Northern Europe, Middle East, Central America, South America, Sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa
Most Active Countries
If we look further, we will see what countries you were visiting from. Again, this isn’t an accurate science but it sure lends some credibility to the title “Planet Chiropractic.” These were the 20 most active countries on Wednesday in order from most popular to least popular.
The United States, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, Netherlands, New Zealand, Denmark, Japan, Spain, France, Costa Rica, Brazil, Belgium, Israel, Italy, Croatia, Hungary, Greece, Hong Kong, and Egypt.
In the United States, chiropractors from the state of California came in at No. 1 for visits. That was followed by Georgia, Florida, New York and Michigan. Other states in the U.S. provided pretty much the same numbers but what is interesting to see, and telling if you know what you’re looking for, were the cities you are in and not merely the states.
Among the most active cities for Wednesday, were Hayward California, Marietta Georgia, New York New York, and Troy Michigan. Two of those cities are the homes of chiropractic campuses, and the feedback I am getting from students suggests that the media files on the multimedia page are being transferred around at a rapid pace. That’s great news as the bulk of our audio is strong in chiropractic philosophy.
As far as Internet providers go, you guys use everything from America Online to UUNET. While America Online is popular, so are MindSpring and MediaOne.net as well as BellSouth.net. Seeing MediaOne.net and BellSouth.net is a good sign since it suggests that you are beginning to use cable and DSL modems. (You can’t watch the video on planet chiropractic without them)
Well, that’s a little bit about a day on the planet. While you might not get very specific information, the Web log for your web site can be a valuable tool in helping your patients find what they’re looking for. For example, if you noticed they were looking at pages with certain articles more than others, you may want to increase the number of popular articles or find new ways to show them articles you’d like them to view. If you have questions about your Web logs, feel free to e-mail me and I’ll see if I can better explain what you can use them for. Also, let me know if you’d like to see some more semi technical articles that have a chiropractic focus.
And if nothing else, remember, when you’re on Planet Chiropractic, there is a very good chance that one or more of your colleagues is right there beside you, even though they may physically be thousands of miles away.
planetc1.com-news @ 6:06 am | Article ID: 980172363
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