Visitors vs. PageViews

[echoweb]

Hi everyone,
I have a questions... actually, it's more like a problem. My site (http://echodev.com/)gets around 35,000 visitors/month, but when I viewed my stats, it showed that I only got 65,000 page views, which makes it 2 pages per visitor.

How can it be? I offer a lot of good, original content, and a lot of visitors view 10 pages or more, but the overall number is so low. In my calculations, I should get about 100,000 pageviews per 35,000 visitors.

Please tell me what I should do.
Thank You
Boris http://echodev.com

[Hierophant]

What pages are getting viewed the most? If you have 35,000 visitors and only 65,000 pageviews it sounds like the majority (probably 2/3rds) of your visitors are leaving at the front door.

Do your stats show display resolution, browser used and other information?

Your tutorials are good but you might consider making the longer ones into multiple pages, especially the ASP one. On your tag glossary try breaking up that long table with a file that is almost 100K in size you need to provide the impression of speed.

Also check out your server. When I try to load your pages I get the HTTP header information and then there is a pause of 2-5 seconds then the page downloading finishes. I looked through quite a few of your articles and tutorials (probably generating a good 30-40 page views really quick) and didn't see any original content with the Echo Web name on it. Free content is great but it is even better when you take three or four articles on the same subject and re-write them in a new way expressing your style and possibly a new point of view. Every site has a "10 deadly website sins" article most often the same one. Why not a "10 Deadly Web Sins and what you can do about it" article.

The reason people are leaving is embedded in your stats you just need to dig through the data available.

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Wayne Luke
WR Moderator
ICQ 29015947

[qslack]

Many Webmaster Resource sites don't get fully browsed but rather linked to. By that I mean that, say in e-mail, they might link to http://echodev.com/articles/asp/rocks, but not http://echodev.com.
Maybe SSI a perl script in each page which checks if the visitor came from an outside HTTP_REFERRER and if so, add a small notice saying:
Like this article? See the rest!
I was having the same problem until I did the above method; it worked fabulously (sp) well, with an increase of almost 2 whole pages per visitor.
The industry standard for pageviews per visitor is 3, just so you know.

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Who the heck is Gen. Failure and why does he want to read my hard drive?
Soon to come: Aspology.com

[jonese]

d3v

I'd be interested in that script / SSI call if you have it available..

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Eric Jones - WR Administrator
http://www.sitepoint.com
eric@sitepoint.com
ICQ 1215804 (mention WR)

[qslack]

Sure. I forget the actual script (I did make it myself, though), but here's something that's most likely similar.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">code/font><HR><pre>
#!/usr/bin/perl
#HTTP Referrer check
$hr = $ENV{'HTTP_REFERRER'};
if($hr =~ /domain/) # Doesn't contain the domain in the referrer
{
print "&lt;a href=\"/\"&gt;Like this article? See the rest!&lt;/a&gt;";
}
[/code]

I think that's it. Then, to call it, just put the following WHERE you want the text to be displayed:

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">code/font><HR><pre>
&lt;!--#exec virtual="path/to/script.pl"--&gt;
[/code]

As usual, I'm not responsible for any problems that may arise from this perl script.
Also, I can't guarantee that it'll work; check with your host for Perl and SSI information, and check it for syntax because I haven't coded in Perl since Christmas 1999 (when I got the ASP book that I fell in love with).

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Who the heck is Gen. Failure and why does he want to read my hard drive?
Soon to come: Aspology.com

[echoweb]

Unfortunately it doesn't work...

[This message has been edited by echoweb (edited April 29, 2000).]

[qslack]

OK:
I've checked the script for syntax and it is correct, however I've gotten reports from Boris (echoweb) that it doesn't work. Personally I'm not quite sure what is wrong but I'm going to keep looking.

On ActivePerl 5.003 on a IIS5 Win2000 computer, running as a CGI, it hasn't loaded yet (5mins), but running it on the console has produced no error reports whatsoever.

UPDATE:
It now works on IIS5 with a few additional headers added, and it works on my linux server (apache). It is very possible that the version of Apache your host is running does not support the 'exec' directive. It is a part of SSI so you should contact them.
IIS does not support exec but running the script just as http://localhost/hrc.pl produced the correct output.

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Who the heck is Gen. Failure and why does he want to read my hard drive?
Soon to come: Aspology.com

[This message has been edited by d3v (edited April 29, 2000).]

[jonese]

Thanks d3v!

It's not working though:
http://www.ithinkitsucks.com/test.shtml

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">code/font><HR><pre>
#!/usr/bin/perl
#HTTP Referrer check
$hr = $ENV{'HTTP_REFERRER'};
if($hr =~ /ithinkitsucks/) # Doesn't contain the domain in the referrer
{
print "&lt;a href=\"/\"&gt;Like this page? See the rest!&lt;/a&gt;";
}
[/code]
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Eric Jones - WR Administrator http://www.sitepoint.com
eric@sitepoint.com
ICQ 1215804 (mention WR)

[This message has been edited by jonese (edited April 29, 2000).]

[goodies]

d3v, what is the book you fell in love with? If it's that great I'd like to buy it myself - bean meaning to learn ASP ever since my host started supporting it.

Thanks,
Dan Grossman
webmaster@websitegoodies.com

--
WebSiteGoodies.com - FREE Tools and Resources for Web Developers

[jonese]

Dan
I recommend the WROX books. they are red and an absolut joy!!! I wish they'd come out with a PHP version.

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Eric Jones - SitePoint Administrator
http://www.sitepoint.com
eric@sitepoint.com
ICQ 1215804 (mention WR)

[Gilby]

The SSI code is incorrect and should be either:

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">code/font><HR><pre>&lt;!--#include virtual="path/to/script.pl"--&gt;[/code]

or

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">code/font><HR><pre>&lt;!--#exec cgi="path/to/script.pl"--&gt;[/code]

Gilby - http://gilby.com

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Gilby - http://gilby.com