Weblog

Thursday, 09 July 2009

Wednesday, 10 June 2009

  • Driving More Traffic to Xangans - the Results!

    Update (6/12/09): we've just updated the frontpage to use the overwhelming favorite: Top Blogs, Randomized. Thanks for all your input!
    A week ago we started an experiment using four different versions of the "Top Blogs" module to see which version drives the most traffic. Here are the results (note: these data represent a random sampling, not the actual number of clicks or users*):

    Module VersionTotal ClicksTotal Different Users
    1) Top Blogs - Top 10, in Order3,54987
    2) Top Blogs - Top 50-60, Randomized3,103340
    3) Most Rec'd - Top 50-60, Randomized3,018230
    4) Most Rec'd - Top 10, in Order2,721100

    These data suggest that Top Blogs works better than Most Rec'd in general. But if you look closely at the data for the first two modules, the results are pretty astounding...
    • The first version generated the most overall clicks, but performed worst out of all four versions on spreading those clicks around to different users.
    • The second version had the second-highest number of clicks (with about 12.5% fewer clicks than the first version) but was the runaway leader in spreading around those clicks (it sent clicks to almost four times more users than the first version).
    So now we need your help!

    It looks like we'll probably want to go with one of the first two versions of the module, but which one do you think we should choose for the Xanga frontpage?

    * In this experiment, we randomly assigned a subset of all Xanga visitors to one of the four versions of the module (a same number of visitors went into each group) and then tracked the data on those modules. As such, these results do not represent the actual total number of clicks or different users visited from Xanga's frontpage over the last week, but they should be a fair representation of the relative volume of clicks sent by each version of the module.

Friday, 29 May 2009

  • Driving More Traffic to Xangans - An Experiment

    Today we started experimenting with the "Top Blogs" module on Xanga's frontpage to see if we can drive more traffic to your Xanga sites with it.

    First, we moved the module higher on the page - this move doesn't really require formal experimentation... the new placement should drive more clicks - woohoo!

    Now, we're experimenting with four different versions of that module:
    1. Top 10 "Top Blogs", in order - this is the version of the module we've been using for a while
    2. Top 50 "Top Blogs", randomized - greater variety of posts, gives more people a chance to make it to the frontpage
    3. Top 10 "Most Rec'd", in order - there's a lot of overlap between "Top Blogs" and "Most Rec'd", but there seem to be some breakout (and interesting) posts in Most Rec'd that don't always make it to Top Blogs
    4. Top 50 "Most Rec'd", randomized - just like #2, above - offers greater variety and gives more people a chance
    This one is a more formal experiment: we are randomly choosing one of the four to show each visitor (for the next week, you should be seeing only one of these four) and we are collecting careful click-through data.

    We're going to run the experiment for about a week, crunch the data and then share the results with all of you to help us all make a decision on how best to use that module to drive traffic.

    In the meantime, we'd love to hear from people seeing each of the four different versions - do you like the version you're seeing or do you think you'd prefer a different one? Again, we're agnostic on the four versions... we just want to find the most effective way to drive traffic. The data will help inform the ultimate decisions here, but your comments are definitely helpful as well.

    Thanks!

Wednesday, 27 May 2009

  • Footprints Feedback

    We've been hearing anecdotally that some users are browsing Xanga less because of Footprints.

    Personally, I do browse a bit less because I know people will see my footprints... but I also browse more, b/c sometimes I surf my Footprints and click back to other people. Net net, my browsing is probably about the same?

    But in talking to Xangans, we're hearing the same story from a number of people:
    • People are browsing other people's sites less...
    • But they love seeing who is visiting their site!

    Overall though, they're visiting less pages since we launched Footprints doh.

    Two quick questions:

    1) Do you browse less because of you know people can see your Footprints?
    2) Do you have your settings set to browse anonymously, or to Footprints Lock?

    Please let us know! We'd love to get a better sense for how people are using Footprints...

Monday, 25 May 2009

  • Xanga Fixes - Known Issues & Bugs

    All of the site maintenance we've done recently (and some of the subsequent site funkiness) has stemmed from two big efforts that have been keeping us busy over here at Xanga HQ:

    1) We've been massively upgrading the hardware that powers Xanga.

    Some of the hardware was almost six years old - which is Methuselah-old for this type of stuff. The new stuff is faster and more reliable. It's also a lot smaller and more energy efficient - which means it costs Xanga (and the environment ) a lot less to run than the old hardware.

    2) We've been upgrading the software that powers Xanga too

    Along with replacing the hardware, we've also been overhauling the software architecture of Xanga. The ultimate goal, of course, is to help make things more reliable and maintainable. But this type of upgrade brings inevitable hiccups as well...

    Now we're focused on stamping out bugs!

    We know the recent changes have introduced some new bugs. And we know there are some long-standing bugs from the old system. With your help, we'd like to focus on fixing them!

    • Known issues that we're currently working to fix:
      • Anonymous footprints aren't showing the location of the visitor.
      • Some emails aren't being delivered - particularly to yahoo and att.net, which includes bellsouth.net and other domains  (this one is primarily because different ISPs are rate-limiting the amount of email we can send to them). Please let us know if you aren't receiving email.
      • Usertag counts in the feedback log module are stuck at 0.
    • Intermittent issues for which we need more information:
      • We've seen some reports about specific Xanga sites not always rendering properly.  It sounds like the css for the site isn't loading, which causes weird display issues.
      • If you're having a problem like this, please leave a comment.
    • Recently Fixed Issues (woohoo!):
      •  Comment reply emails weren't being sent.
      •  View counts were updating slowly.
      •  Footprint feedback counts were updating slowly.
    Just wanted to let you all know what we're currently doing to fix up the site. If you've been having any other big problems with the site (old or new) please let us know in the comments and we'll add them into this effort.

    Thanks so much.

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