Re: AIS Website Goals and Suggestions

As I showed before AIS is performing quite well in respect to other plant society websites. I wanted to share the following ALEXA ratings. Remember lower is better. Alexa does not rate sites that get too little traffic to measure. That is why most of the AIS sections are not listed. But what is listed gives some idea of their relative importance on the internet. As John pointed out there are analytic tools that can tell us what pages of the AIS website are most visited. It seems to me before we go about redesigning the menu it would be nice to get a better understanding of how the AIS website is used. I do not think quantity of traffic is the only parameter that should be considered. How do we want people to use the website (Perhaps how does it attract new members)? How can it best serve existing members? I believe we should work on gathering some of this information before we proceed in the same way we did the last time that gave us an unsatisfactory result. We have gone se!
 veral years without a correction I do not think we should rush into a quick fix. It is an opportunity to do more/better.
Alexa website rankings
Daves Garden=16,947
All Things Plants=210,987
AIS (including wiki)= 250,593
Reblooming=4,023,712
TBIS=5,493,575
HIPS=7,045,862
SIGNA=7,809,407
Siberian=8,729,218
Median=12,637,921
PCN=14,302,508
DIS=15,966,439


----- Original Message -----
From: "Wayne Messer" <6d200f2f1@rewrite.aisboard.org>
To: aisdiscuss@aisboard.org
Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2014 9:33:56 PM
Subject: [AISdiscuss] AIS Website Goals and Suggestions

As Jim pointed out, we need AIS goals to align the website goals with.  But
there may be website goals that would support whatever AIS goals are.

One website goal that I would put in that category is Keeping members and
the public engaged with what AIS is doing.  We want members to know what is
happening so they can participate and we want the public (potential
members) to see that exciting things are happening because of AIS.

My suggestion for doing this would be to add a blog to the website.  This
would not be the World of Irises blog, which I would continue as it is
showing the breadth and beauty of irises and their history.  The blog I
have in mind would focus more on AIS news and happenings.  It would include

   1. News from the AIS.  Items that now show up under News in our current
   menu.  The Board and various Committees may also have items they wish to
   share.
   2. News from the Sections and Cooperating Societies.  Similar to Gary's
   Section Happenings in the Irises Bulletin.
   3. News from the Regions.  Much of this is in the Regions' newsletters
   and websites and deserves a wider audience.
   4. News from the Affiliated Clubs.  This we might have to limit if it
   really gets rolling.

As a blog, items could be a little longer than some that now appear in News
on the website.  And they can be more casual and include images as well as
the links to the full items.  Having it as a blog will also make it easier
to point to individual news items from other AIS sites and even from
non-AIS sites.

I believe there are widgets we could add to World of Irises which would
display the titles for the last few entries from this blog adjacent to the
World of Irises entry.  Presumably there is also something similar so we
could show recent entries titles on the AIS website, maybe the front page,
as well.  As an aside, there might also be a widget for the AIS website to
display recent titles from the World of Irises.

I have no idea whether this would fit in the current design of the
website.  If it would, the menu item News could be replaced with News Blog
or whatever we would like to call it.

If it would not fit in the current design, it could still be implemented
without waiting for a redesign by hosting the blog on a separate site.

My other suggestion/comment on adding a blog would be to follow the World
of Irises setup.  If I understand it, they have someone (Andi) responsible
overall for it and there are many additional editors who can add items.
This allows more frequent changes and updates without overloading one or
two people.

Regards,

Wayne Messer

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