No need to poll

In the last few weeks, the Royal Gazette have been running a very odd series of polls on their website.

The first asked what operating system readers were using. The second, what screen resolution they had. Now they're asking what country readers live in.

The Gazette would do better to add a tracker such as SiteMeter or StatCounter to their site instead, which would produce these statistics (and others) automatically.

Comments

[Triforce on 02.02.06 at 10:52]

Agreed. Why poll users and get potentially inaccurate data when they could use the server logs or one of those services you mention to get all the information they need, reliably? They could even post the figures on the site for the readers if they like.

Surely they could find better things to poll the visitors on?

[Marcus on 02.02.06 at 12:05]

Statcounter is good. That's what this site uses isn't it?

My stats were mentioned a while ago here
http://marcusbrain.blogspot.com/2005/11/stats-about-my-blog.html

I was slightly unhappy when my blog got hit with all you lot and ie6 usage went through the roof.

Apparently firefox isn't all the popular in Bermuda. :)

[Phil on 02.02.06 at 13:18]

Marcus

I use SiteMeter and StatCounter, as both have their strengths and weaknesses.

[Kristen Sousa on 02.02.06 at 14:29]

All I know is that the site has been painfully slow the past few days. Maybe it's my link (I currently live in the UK).. but it takes over a minute for some pages to load on broadband.

Oh well, Bermuda Sun it is :)

[Marcus on 02.02.06 at 15:33]

I don't get enough hits (and need that much info) to use anything but the free statcounter. Although if the last 100 logs stay at people using ie6 I might have to pay for a larger log.

Oh by the way prefer the photo of the light bouy at dockyard to the PO boxes.

have fun

[J:dequranaBL on 02.02.06 at 19:26]

Um they may be collecting some preliminary information in the ongoing attempt to spruce up their website ... just a thought ... they do some pretty weird things there but they aren't so sad that they would be asking those sort of questions just for fun, you know!

[RedOnion on 02.02.06 at 20:47]

I travel often and try to stay in touch via the online version of the RG. On some days it doesn't get updated to today's news for hours, sometimes they miss a day, and the Mid Ocean News link often links to the previous week. On one occasion when I tried to read the RG, it sent me to a newspaper site in Toledo, OH. Kinda pitiful really, but better than nothing. The Bermuda Sun site has improved tremendously lately, so it can be done.

btw, I use Extreme tracking on my site, more than enough info provided to suit my purpose, and it is free which suits my budget.

[Marcus on 03.02.06 at 07:05]

J:dequranaBL

The point that Limey was making is that all that information can be found by using one of the products he mentioned.

[Raptor on 03.02.06 at 10:11]

RG is slowest of all sites I visit, by far. I'm hoping whatever they're doing leads to some improvement. The Mid Ocean can be frustrating--it's often not updated on schedule.

[Bill Zuill on 03.02.06 at 23:16]

We wanted to do a couple of snap polls to give us information on our users that the stats software we use does not provide with. This is just one of the tools we are using as we look at ways of improving The Royal Gazette site. Limey's suggestions on both SiteMeter and Statcounter are very useful and we are going to look at adding one or both, so thanks Limey.
We are well aware of how slow pages can be to load on the site and we are trying to sort it out with the company that hosts our site. Also, I think you will find that the site has been updated by 10 a.m. consistently in the last six weeks or so and I don't expect this to change. I remember the Toledo Blade all too well ... don't ask unless you want to see an editor's head explode in mid-post!
We are in the middle of plans to upgrade the site and you may have noticed some tweaking already ... there's more to come.
We are very grateful for the reader support for the site and your comments are very helpful. Thanks.

[Uncle Elvis on 03.02.06 at 23:42]

"...don't ask unless you want to see an editor's head explode in mid-post!"

Now THAT I want to see! *grin*

Actually, there is another whose head I'd like to see explode, but that's another story!

Thanks for poking your head in, Mr. Zuill. It's a good sign.

[Royal Gazette Webmaster on 04.02.06 at 02:15]

Thank you all for your comments. As Bill Zuill's said, the reason we did the snap polls was to get a feel for information currently not supplied by our software and hosting company. They do give us most information that we need, but were missing these three pieces. We will be looking at the companies that you mentioned, in addition to other measurement companies.

We are in the process of updating our website, so please be patient. As Bill mentioned, we are trying to make sure everything is updated by 10am Bermuda time everyday, and we our working to update our hosting so it loads faster.

I would welcome any ideas or comment you may have.

thank you again
Webmaster - The Royal Gazette

[Phil on 04.02.06 at 08:46]

Bill/Webmaster

Glad to hear you're in the process of improving the site.

I hope that as part of your improvements you'll consider making at least one RSS feed available. Ideally I'd like to see one RSS feed for your News and Opinion sections, one for Business, one for Sport, and one for Lifestyle.

Although these feeds have been slowing gaining in popularity, and most major news sites have one, right now probably only the geeks among us actually use them. However that will soon change. When the next version of Internet Explorer is released later this year (a second beta version was publicly available earlier this week) it will include built-in support for subscribing to RSS feeds. At that point, I imagine RSS usage will go through the roof.

I know that some organisations are reluctant to implement RSS feeds because they fear it will result in a loss of traffic to their site (with users reading the stories in their newsreader instead). However if you choose to make available only the first few sentences of a story on the feed, it will require anyone who wants to read the full thing to click through to your site to do so.

Having a feed can also drive additional traffic to your site. Other websites can then use free utilities such as FeedDigest to take the feed and display the content from it (with links through to your site). FeedDigest also allows multiple different feeds to be mixed together. This is why I would prefer, for example, sports and news stories to be provided in separate feeds - I would like to use your feed to provide news headlines on LiB but not sports stories.