Leather Animals From Omersa

By: Jake - May 7th, 2008

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I found a gem in the comments section of a post on Polly-Vous Francais. Simply, there exists a company in England that makes really large, stuffed, leather animal chairs and foot stools. The shop is called The Omersa Company and its products look like they belong in some colonial safari club or a room built like a humidor. I realize now that my Grandmother has one of these hiding in her living room under a table, beneath a stern looking portrait of a merchant-prince ancestor.

I’d get one but I don’t want to think of how much these pieces are in American dollars.

The Folly of Free Market Parking

By: Jake - May 6th, 2008

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Municipal parking is becoming a hot issue for urban planners across the United States. For many years, the mode in most cities and towns has been to offer free or low cost parking that’s been developed or subsidized by the city. Some planners contend that the abundance of free parking has created a maelstrom of traffic congestion in many U.S cities. Now, major U.S cities like Washington, D.C and San Francisco are exploring new methods to deal with the parking problem and the swell of automobile traffic.

According to a recent NPR piece, San Francisco is planning to roll out a new high tech system of monitoring parking meters and parking spaces in garages. The city will be installing sensors under the surface of all public parking spaces. The sensors will tell the city which spaces are open and which are full. Further, drivers will be able to use smart phones to tap into the sensor network and get live updates of open parking spaces in the city. This new system should reduce the amount of time drivers spend cruising for parking spots, thereby reducing automobile emissions, double parking, and driver stress. San Francisco is going one step further, parking meters will also be connected to this updated network. Drivers will be able to update their meter over the internet using a credit card - no more shit-eating-grin as you ask an intern to feed quarters in the rain!

Here comes the rub - the city will also be able to remotely change the rates on parking meters. During peak hours the rates will rise, at lulls the rates will fall, and a single oft-sought parking space could cost more than one a few yards down the street. NPR compared this system to a similar one in Washington, D.C where parking meters near a new stadium charge up to $18 an hour during peak times. Planners are terming this type of municipal parking policy “free market parking,” and argue that the subsidizing of low cost public parking has choked the development of American cities. An abundance of public parking, they contend, encourages sprawl development and discourages public transit. Apparently, the book to read on the topic is Donald Shoup’s “The High Cost of Free Parking.” I haven’t read it yet so I feel unqualified to discuss this issue at great length (I plan on reading the book soon and will repost after I’ve read it).

I minored in Urban Planning and almost majored in it - I only stuck with my History major because switching in my third year of school would’ve required another year of college. Planners by and large want to do good, but their schemes often carry heavy negatives. Take free-market parking as an example - it is noble to support a healthier environment, but charging a market rate for parking across a city means that most people will not be able to afford parking. On a recent trip to Boston, my father and I learned that the market rate for two hours of parking floated between 25 - 40 dollars - imagine the cost for an entire day. Further, planners in smaller cities love to incorporate big city solutions to small city problems (an example would be the notion that Charlottesville should have a monorail).

Planners argue that parking programs like this one will persuade people to use more mass transit. I am a huge supporter of mass transit in theory, but I’ve found that mass transit in the United States generally sucks - especially in smaller cities. For example, here in Charlottesville, I could take the number 5 bus to work everyday. But if I miss the bus arriving a block away at an unpredictable time, I’ll have to wait around 30 minutes to an hour in one of the city’s crappier neighborhoods. Walking is out of the question, and biking would be an option if I had a route that was at all safe. Simply put, it’s easier and safer to drive to work. I suspect this is the case for a number of Americans.

Arguments like like mine typically piss off urban planners. They delve back into history and say things like “Well if the city had been planned better in the first place this wouldn’t be an issue.” True, but it wasn’t. And until there is large scale system of reliable, usable, and affordable public transit, I’m not sure implementing what amounts to a burdensome tax on poor folks is the right way to fix congestion in the central city.

Abandon Limitations - With These Conditions

By: Jake - March 10th, 2008

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As I was doing my standard web browsing routine today, I ran across the advertisement on the left. Follow the asterisk and then look back at the tag line. A little confusion at American Express’ ad agency?

Silverback - You Gotta Sell

By: Jake - March 2nd, 2008

Over the past few weeks, there’s been growing buzz about Silverback which is some sort of application for web designers due out later this year. Amazingly, the viral buzz hasn’t stemmed from the program’s amazing features or ability to streamline the design process, instead people are getting all jacked up about the background images used on the Silverback site.

If you haven’t done it yet, I’d recommend checking out the Silverback page and slowly resizing your browser window. See how the vines move? Pretty nice huh?

So, the background images of vines move at different speeds. This movement creates an effect of a dark and murky jungle - which makes sense because gorillas love the jungle. Clearleft (Silverback’s developer) has created a really nice visual effect and I congratulate the company for driving some solid traffic to the Silverback page. But I am curious to know if Clearleft is doing enough to capitalize on this buzz.

Currently the Silverback page is comprised of four elements: a pretty transparency feature, an illustration of a gorilla that I wish I could draw, an e-mail sign up form, and a basic tag line, “Silverback for web designers.” There isn’t a whole lot of selling happening on the page. It seems that the conversion goal is to have folks sign up for the Silverback newsletter or RSS feed but, to be honest, nothing on that page really makes me want to get more information.

I am in the demographic of folks who might purchase this app. I spend my working days flipping between firebug, style sheets, web analytics packages, and Photoshop. If Silverback is the program that will revolutionize my work flow I’ll get it - or whine until my boss lets me put it on a company card. But right now I couldn’t tell you how Silverback could help me or one of my clients - except maybe that one of our clients might like the cool background image trick.

I’d love to see the Silverback page feature a description of the app and a screen shot or two. Right now the page is largely candy with no meat - adding a little bit of substance to the page would likely drive some more e-mail and RSS subscriptions. Hell, Clearleft could even test the effect of those small additions.

Just a thought.

Bounce Rate Basics - Web Analytics for Bloggers

By: Jake - February 15th, 2008

Bounce Rate is the single easiest web analytics metric to use and understand. In short, it is the rate at which people enter your site and almost immediately leave. Avinash Kaushik, author of Web Analytics an Hour a Day, has even described bounce rate as the “sexiest” web metric. I’m not a math guy so I’m hesitant to describe any metric as sexy - but I do believe that bounce rate is the most useful and easiest metric to use when taking a broad, overall look at the quality of your site’s traffic. It’s important to understand that bounce shouldn’t be used to judge your visitors, but that it should be used to judge your site. It’s not the visitors fault that they don’t like something about your page - it’s your blog’s fault and it’s your job to fix it.

As a blogger you should be concerned about the quality of your traffic, not the quantity. For instance, let’s say you’re lucky enough to get dugg. An article on your site is being flooded with traffic - you’re bathing in page views and unique visitor counts. But just because people are coming to your post doesn’t mean they’re actually reading the content. A good percentage of those people are actually immediately clicking the back button.

Knowing this, an important question to ask yourself is that of “is this the type of traffic I’m looking for?” I don’t want rapid-departure traffic on OldStacks. I want readers who’ll read my writing, maybe find something interesting or useful, and then write comments.

Bounce rate is a good starting tool for bloggers to use when assessing the quality of their site’s traffic. It’s important to understand that bounce rate is more like a chain saw than a scalpel. It’s not precise and there’s little thought behind it - we won’t know why visitors immediately left, we’ll only know that this percentage left as soon as they came.

Below I’ve given three basic examples of ways to bounce rate in conjunction with other metrics to better understand your site’s traffic. I use Google Analytics so all of my examples will be based around that platform - if you use a different analytics package and need advice feel free to let me know.

1. Examining new and return visitors by bounce rate. I chose this combination of metrics because it’s an easy and broad first step. Here, you already have readers segmented into two categories: new visitors and returning visitors. If you look at the image below, you’ll see that I’ve decided to look at new vs. returning visitors in terms of bounce rate, and overall contribution to total bounces.

  • Almost 70% of new visitors bounce from the site. That means that only 30% of new visitors stick around long enough to read the content. I am really trying to grow the number of return visitors at OldStacks. But when 70% of new arrivals bounce that’s hard to do.
  • Return visitors bounce at a rate of 48%. Unfortunately, that’s not much better than new visitors. I have a hunch that a lot of those bounces could be people returning to the site to see if there is new content and updates - most likely my parents, bosses, and maybe my sister’s boyfriend.

At this point I am more concerned about growing the site’s quality readership so I need to try and lower that bounce rate of new visitors. By and large, new visitors don’t randomly type in this URL - they’re referred by a link or a search engine. So, we’ll take a look at bounce rate by referrers and keywords.

2. Examining keywords by bounce rate.Keywords are great because they provide insight into visitor intention. Visitors are searching for specific information and via our keyword reports we can see their search queries. When a visitors arrives on a page and don’t quickly see something resembling their search query - they’ll bounce.

  • In the photo above you’ll see that I’ve zoned in on one search string - “bossman baltimore oldstacks.” It is one of my more popular keywords. It is a pretty specific set of keywords, so the bounce rate is low at 20%. Those visitors are getting exactly what they’re looking for - my article on The Wire soundtrack and local Baltimore music. You’ll also see that there are no new visitors arriving on those keywords - which leads me to believe that someone likes that article but is forgetting to bookmark it.
  • I would look at your most popular keywords - they ones that drive the most traffic to your site. See if their bounce rate is higher than your site average and if it is, set about fixing that. If people are searching for “silver dollars” find a way to prominently highlight that you do, indeed, talk about silver dollars on that page.

3. Examining referrers by bounce rate. Most of the referrals have come from StumbleUpon, Reddit, and Digg. As I said earlier, these 3 sites can really drive traffic to an unsuspecting blog. In my case, however, I am still waiting for that overwhelming wave of traffic to come.

  • Here’s how I propose handling the intelligence gleaned from bounce rate by referrer. Examine the sites that send you the largest amounts of quality traffic - in my case this would be StumbleUpon and Digg - and focus on marketing to those sites. Become a prolific Digg citizen and stumble around the web. Similarly, if another blog is sending quality traffic to your site - start reading that blog daily. Add it to your feed reader and provide quality commentary via trackbacks and blog comments. Quality referrals will produce quality traffic.

Bounce rate is a quick and easy web analytics metric. It can provide a simple but effective analysis of how your site speaks to the average visitor. As you drill down into more specific metrics and categories continue using bounce rate as your go-to analytics tool. Then, start experimenting and improving the important pages on your site. Over time, as you lower your average bounce rate, you’ll have a healthier site and the type of quality traffic you desire.

OldStacks: We Shall be a Site on a Hill

By: Jake - February 7th, 2008

I had a good conversation with my boss, Alan, yesterday about blogging. At work, we often advise clients to use social media to their advantage. “Blog!” we tell them, “only good things will happen.” But in life, good things are rarely free - developing a good blog with quality traffic (quality traffic has nothing to do with quantity by the way - but that’s a discussion for another post) takes time. This is a message we’ve been driving home for a while and yet yesterday I almost forgot it.

RKG’s blog is pretty successful and I am a little envious. I want to build OldStacks into a site with a mass of subscribers, steady traffic, and visitors eager to comment - but I’ve got to remember that all these goals will take time. My boss put it best “Jake,” he said, “you’re probably going to be talking to an empty room for a while.” A good point.

Right now I feel like OldStacks is still pretty raw: my writing is rusty and the design is pretty basic. But even with these drawbacks I’ve had some success in my first few weeks. On a couple of days, both Digg and StumbleUpon have sent me pretty solid traffic. Truth be told though, if it wasn’t for those lucky days with solid numbers my Google Analytics graph would look something like the chart below.

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Alan, maybe unintentionally, raised another good point, “So,” he said, “you’re writing about web design and usability right?” I didn’t have a good answer to his question because I hadn’t really thought about it yet. How crazy is that? I didn’t even know what I wanted to write about. I hadn’t thought about it. But our quick conversation motivated me to sit down and come up with some simple plans for OldStacks.

  • I am going to redesign the site. I threw this design together because I wanted to stop worrying about pixels and focus on writing. Now that I’ve written a few articles - I feel like I’ve got that ball rolling - and I can give more attention to the site’s design. I am going to stick to bullet proof design principles - elasticity, ems, etc. Currently, OldStacks is designed based on set pixel widths. That will change and I’l try to have it done in 6 weeks.
  • My articles will primarily focus on design, usability, and Apple products. I do want some freedom here. Every once in a while I’ll see a good movie or some McLuhan-esque ideas will pop into my head - I’ll likely write the occasional post about those things.
  • I want to publish at least two articles a week. This could be a challenge but it’s the only way to stay fresh and keep practiced.
  • My main goal for this site will not be money. This site does not cost me a tremendous amount in upkeep. I do have one little ad on the side. I figure it would be nice if I could recoup my costs. It is unlikely that I’ll add more. If this blog ever takes off and I get bank I will find positive ways to donate a lot of that money.

Any thoughts or input is always welcome.