After about one year after launching LAb[au]’s website redesign, here is an excerpt from Google Analytics:

0,91% bounce rate

The bounce rate describes the proportion of users whose next action after landing on your website is… to leave it – hence the “bounce” metaphor. That means the lower is the better.

I’ve never seen such a low bounce rate: it means most people that land on the homepage interact with it.  (Ok, I’m hearing the skeptics among us who will probably state that it’s because you actually need to click to  get to some content. Before you complain about “mystery meat” navigation, just understand this: web designers and developers are not LAb[au]’s target audience; we are reaching out to actors on the art, architecture scene, curators, public and private institutions, etc… which are used to – and expect  – creativity, out-of-the box thinking,  daring, clear cut identity profiles. Anyway.)

3:11 minutes average time on site

Now, apparently, people enjoy what they discover: they stay for more than 3 minutes on the site. On the other websites i track, it never reaches such a long time (it’s more between 1:30 to 2:30 minutes).

83,76% new visits

That mean 16,24% returning visitors.  A quick look into the Visitors loyalty screen show most  visitors are, as usual, first-time visitors. But 3.53% have returned more than a hundred time. This seems quite a lot to me (hell i don’t even qualify to that returning visit rate!).

Why such a big amount of first time visitors?

LAB[au]’s work is truly very inspiring and attracts quite a lot of attention from “niche contexts” such as architecture, digital art and cultural magazines, both online and offline. This generates a consistent and slowly but rather steadily increasing qualified traffic flow (as shown in the graph below).

How about the impact of Social media?

It’s quite difficult to get a clear picture from google Analytics in regards to social media: i wish they were integrating a specific screen that gather the relevant information. Still, part of the information is there, hidden in the mass, waiting to be mined.

For instance, the efficience of “share-this” buttons

Via the Events system, I do track the number of times people hit a “share this” link via Facebook, twitter and myspace. Basically, only twitter and facebook are used by visitors. Last month, these were hit 16 times. Not bad, i guess, since it’s increasing steadily. It’s not much not either, yet i lack comparative data so i can’t really make up my mind. Besides, i don’t use “share this” buttons myself, I mostly do cut-and-paste (i’m a control freak). Since i suppose i’m not the only control freak on the planet, this  is just an estimate (statistics are estimates). So, back to the “refering sites”, this time looking at visitors coming from Twitter and Facebook

I’m rather pleased by these statistics as the website interface was truly an experiment into a different type of navigation system, integrating hierarchical and transversla navigation. It takes some time to get used to. From what i can see from both user experience captures and traffic statistics, it’s not too difficult. Relieved i am. For now.

I can’t believe our 4000+ people who all inscribed themselves freely (we don’t inscribe people without their express consent) don’t then at least open our message, so why, oh wy so much turn down?

The one single cause that i find realistic is that people don’t open the email because they don’t see it !! Meaning, not that they are blind, but that the damn bytes land in their junkbox, since many of them use hotmail, live, msn, yahoo, google and what not.

That’s where, I learned, a specific entry in your domain’s DNS record can help you solve this: SPF record tells any mailserver that receives email from your host, if the computer that sent it is actually recognized by you as a legit mail server. If it is not, there is a good chance that your email will end up in the junkbox. I know that most of the above-mentioned free email account providers use it, as sp@m has become such a burden on the internet activity.

So i set up an SPF record for our account, and since i’m sending a newsletter today, i’ll tell in one week if it improved (or not).

Set up the SPF record

1. The easy way is to use the SPF wizard provided by openspf.org.

2. Add the generated string to your domain’s DNS Record

3. Restart your DNS Server

4. you’ll probably have to wait that the DNS cache updates itself (that is set by the Time-To-Live or TTL parameter in your server).

Test your SPF record

Now, you have to test your SPF record. Two options:

- via an online form
- via an spf-test(Replace this blurb with the @ sign)openspf.org“>email (here is an check-auth(Replace this blurb with the @ sign)verifier.port25.com“>alternative one). That’s the technique I chose, i simply sent them a dummy newsletter, and they reply with the full SPF record check log. Perfect for my needs.

And now, back in one week to review the results of implementing SPF records to avoid our newsletter landing in users’ junk mail box !

PS: additional resources
SPF tools

The best way to spend your time while you play poker for free is to analyze your opponents play and practice your own playing style. In order to maximize your time playing free poker online you will need to stay away from the high stakes tables. Free online poker enthusiasts tend to engage in wild and illogical play at the high roller tables. If you spend a few minutes and watch people play poker on the low limit tables you will be able to develop what is perhaps the best online poker skill; reading your opponent.

The great advantage of playing poker in an online casino is the fact that a player can focus purely on their opponent’s betting style. Within a few hands of playing free poker online, an attentive poker player can easily adjust to their opponent’s betting habits and determine the best time to bluff or slow play. Acknowledging that an individual’s betting habits are being scrutinized by their opponent, it is recommended that a player switch his or her style and betting habits while they play free poker online. Switching up betting and bluffing habits allows the online poker player to develop a strong defense. The harder a player’s betting habits are to determine, the fewer defeats a player will suffer while playing online poker.

The lesson here is not to dismiss the opportunity to play free poker online, a good player can become a great player and a beginner can learn the skills necessary to play online poker. Whenever a player feels like they need a break from the real money card room but still want some action they should really engage in a few hands of free poker online.

One of the best and most trustworthy Casino’s online is 888.com, and you can choose from many games not just poker but also blackjack, roulette, bingo and even sport!

http://me.dium.com/

Me.dium is a plug-in for the Firefox Browser that enables “social browsing”. It occupies a space on left side of your browser window, has a bulls-eye graphic in the top half, and a buddy list/chat window in the lower half. When you navigate around different sites an algorithm at Me.dium it looks through the characteristics of those sites and puts related sites on the bulls-eye. If another Me.dium user happens to be on one of those sites in the bulls-eye, a small buddy icon (yellow for a friend, blue for a generic user) floats near the icon for the their site. You can visit other sites on the bulls-eye or you can chat with anyone in the bulls-eye, friend or not, in the chat box. Or you can just click on a friend in my buddy list to chat. It is a way of expressing how different people and the amount of activity affect a person. For example, when you go outside looking for something to eat, you react to the people’s behavior around you and migrate to the restaurant that has more positive vibes. That’s what Me.dium does. By seeing what other people around you are doing, it gives you a range of options (or supplies a range of information) that mirrors the range you have in everyday life making everyday decisions.”

found via: Digital Media, Digital Meaning

Here is how it looks on my desktop (i made it as a tiny floatbar):

So i had to find an easy and efficient way to protect all these pages, blocking email harvesters and spambots BEFORE they could actually parse the pages and collect their victims.

Enters (again) one of your best spam-nuke weapons: Bad Behavior by Michael Hampton .

How to protect a html only website from spambots and email harvesters:

1. Make sure your webserver has PHP 4.3.+ enabled
2. Download Bad Behavior
3. FTP to your site, create a folder that will contain bad behaviour core scripts (personally, i use a "_lib" library for all my scripts, and have my "badBehavior_antispam" folder inside. I name it like this so if another developer inherits the website, he gets what this folder contains without having to dig into the code)
4. Create (or update) a .htaccess file, by adding this piece of code:

an example of the localpath:

Don't know the absolute local path of your website ? Upload a php file containing the following bit of code and then browser to it, it will display the local path to the root of your site:

That's about it! Your site is protected from email harvesters and spam bots!

[UPDATE:] i've found out (the hard way) that this may break php script if your server 's php.ini file has short_open_tag = Off. (that is: < ? instead of < ?php) 

So make sure you either always use < ?php or set the php.ini variable short_open_tag = On 

"In Jakob Nielsen's opinion e-mail newsletters are still the best way to maintain customer relationships." 

Read it all here:
GUUUI - Usability of newsletters and news feeds

Email clients

Well in this global market you just can't expect everyone to wear the same clothes, now, can you? Same goes for computers and the programs that run on it. email clients come in all flavours out there: Aol, hotmail, outlook express, outlook 2000 ) outlook 2002, entourage, thunderbird to name just but a few. Sending flash means sending html as markup for it. What if your customer 'email client cannot display html or is not configured to do so ? Hopefully, you have sent a txt-only version of the mail, he will then be displayed that txt version. But if not, well, he'll just see your ugly html code (and hastily dump your email in the trashcan).

Flash not installed, or wrong version

Ok, now, let's assume your customer does have html rendering enabled. Flash does not come installed on all computers, and while it is bundled in Internet Explorer by default, it's only version 5, if i'm not mistaken.

Security settings

well, a flash file can be used to run malicious code. Hence there is a good chance it'll be blocked by your email client security settings. That's my two-cent at those wanting to send flash signatures and such horrid things. Now, get lost or read Flash Email Update - 2004 : test cases