Greetings:
It has been fun watching the discussion concern the traffic to the ASA web site vs. that of the usual suspects. Over the past two months I have been reading the burgeoning literature on how to attract customers and keep them happy. The goal is a sticky web site that keeps them coming back. The literature, however, is mainly directed at webs with things to sell. There is little out there on the more academic sites especially the niche such as the ASA offers.
One more or less universal goal is the right set of 'key words' found at the top of the home page - readable only in the html version. Search engines look at these in a variety of ways on a more or less regular basis and point people to our site. You might think that 'science and religion' or 'science and Christianity's would be the natural terms to access us. Wrong! There
is a huge diversity of terms that get to us - Christian dating is one of the leaders. The February statistic report on the ASA home page shows the diversity of search terms on the various search engines.
One limiting feature of our site is the intellectual level of much of the material. With the exception of the Youth Page, some historical material, and notable others the average home school parent, youth leader and church leader cannot connect. There is a positive side. The great bulk of the material has faced referees! Enough said.
Another limiting factor is that we are for something! What that is may not always be obvious - there is a need for some overarching statements that link often disparate articles on the same theme. This appears to be more than even a liberally educated chemist can come up with.
The good news is that our traffic is increasing month to month. Also, over 50% are bookmarked accesses.
Terry and I are open to your suggestions of articles and page structure. I repair broken links. We need all of you to promote our site in and out of the church. Make Color Prints of the top page and place them on your church literature desk, Christian school library etc.
With appreciation,
Jack Haas - ASA Web Editor
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Apr 02 2001 - 20:11:43 EDT