News & Views Technology Review
| Who We Are: On the Web News & Views Technology Review |
By Michael Hendry Originally published in News & Views July 2000 issue.
Copyright 2000 STC-Philadelphia Metro Chapter. For permission to reprint
this article, contact the Managing Editor.
| In preparation for our new web site (due this fall!), I needed to know who we are on the web: the tools we use and what we're looking for. I did a complete analysis of the log files for the STC-PMC web site for the last six months, and I found the results fascinating. I hope those of you involved in web management will also find this information useful. Tools we useHere's a breakdown of the computers and browsers that we use to access our web site. BrowsersBrowser use is probably the most important factor in designing for the web. Figure 1 shows the breakdown of browser usage for the month of May 2000. Over 44% of us use Internet Explorer (IE) 5. Since November 1999, Internet Explorer gained about 5.5% over Netscape Navigator (Netscape). Netscape 3 use dropped to almost nothing, and IE5 and Netscape 4 split the upgrades from previous versions.
Computers We are mainly PC users, split almost evenly between Windows 98, Windows 95, and Windows NT. About 3% use Macintosh, and one of you is using HP UNIX. You know who you are... How that compares to the web overall Web Snapshot (http://websnapshot.mycomputer.com) provides up-to-date statistics for the web in general. Currently, 64.3% of web surfers use IE5. 54.7% use Windows 98; we use 95, NT, and even Windows 2000 more. Nearly twice as many of us use Macintosh. So we're more technically savvy, but we've got a lot of Mac and Win95 holdouts. One important statistic for web design is the resolution surfers use. That information was not available for our web site, but for the whole web, the breakdown goes as follows:
Thankfully, 640 x 480 is down, but look for that number (and smaller resolutions) to rise as wireless access becomes more prevalent. Where we come fromOf course, most hits on our web site come from the Northeastern United States, but we have a global audience. For May 2000, the following table summarizes our visitors from around the world:
That person with the HP UNIX seems to have a stronghold in the Caribbean. When and why we hit itThe most popular time for us to browse seems to be weekday mornings, between 7 am and 9 am. Other popular times are 11 am to noon and 1 pm to 2 pm. Activity drops significantly during the weekend and from noon to 1 pm weekdays. So, we have lives, and we are fairly conscientious about web surfing at work, but we won't give up lunch to do it. Aside from the home page, the most popular page on our web site is Jobscape, averaging 510 visitors per month. No wonder we're so careful at work. Next comes the archives of News & Views (with some articles getting around 200 visitors a month), followed by meetings information and resources. Overall, the site seems to serve our community well, and all the people who have worked to make it what it is should be congratulated. But we always want to make it better, so if you have any ideas or complaints, please log on and email the webmaster. The analysisI used WebTrends log analyzer program (www.webtrends.com) to analyze the log files on the site. This package did an excellent job creating over seventy pages of tables and charts, presenting all available data clearly. You can download a thirty-day trial version from their web site. If you are interested in viewing the complete analysis of the STC-PMC site for May, you can download it from the online version of this article at http://stc.org/region2/phi/n&v/soft0700.html. |
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Last updated: October 10, 2000 (mvh)
