Chip Oglesby

One of the strongest features in WordPress is the ability to change your site design as often or little as you please.

When you design your site, do you consider your readers’ wants and needs, or do you pick a design based purely on aesthetics?

One important thing to take into consideration when designing a site is monitor resolution.

If you’re using an analytics program like Google Analytics, it’s pretty easy to see screen resolution size. But this includes all traffic to your site. We want to focus on a unique segment of visitors: the most engaged visitors.

By creating a custom segment in Google Analytics, we can create a profile of users who stay on our site for at least three or more minutes. This allows us to look at users with a higher degree of engagement then fly-by visitors.

Take a look at the graphic below:

We can easily see that the majority of users who stick around on our site for at least three minutes has a monitor resolution of 1280 x 800. That’s an average size resolution for a 15 inch notebook computer. Users with 1280 x 800 account for 19.34% of total site visits for this segment.

Look below that and you’ll see that I have a pretty dedicated group of visitors with a screen resolution of 800 x 600. Yikes! They account for 8.36% of traffic that stays for more than three minutes.

You could easily ignore them and go with a layout that’s 900 pixels wide, but you would be ignoring a decent percentage of my traffic. As you can tell from the Avg. time on site and Bounce Rate, if this were an e-commerce site, this traffic would be pretty coveted. So I have to pick a design that balances a clean modern feel and looks good in browsers from 800 x 600 and higher.

You don’t always have to sacrifice good design to please everyone. You just need a starting point for what’s acceptable and you can build up from there.

By the numbers:

• 4,400: Number of pictures taken
• 7,983: Miles traveled by plane
• 32: Subway rides in New York
• 9: Plane flights taken
• 4: Metro rides in Washington D.C.
• 2: Amtrak rides taken
• 1: Best year yet!

I told a friend earlier this year after being laid off from The State that 2010 would be “The Year of the Chip!” What I should have said is that it would be a “year of firsts.”

Not in my wildest dreams could I have imagined how great 2010 would turn out to be. The good news is, I’m only getting started and 2011 looks like it’s going to be even better!

The year of the firsts

Here’s what’s happened to make 2010 a year of firsts:

1. This is the first time since graduating from college that I have not worked for a newspaper. I was laid off in January 2010, along with numerous others, in a cost-saving-reduction plan (boo-hoo). Leaving The State was probably one of the best things that could have happened for my career. Presently, I’m employed at The South Carolina Policy Council, a non-profit, non-partisan think tank in downtown Columbia (another first!). Although I do miss working in the newspaper industry on occasion, it’s been very exciting and rewarding working for SCPC so far.



2. I took my first Amtrak ride this year. Originally, I planned on traveling from Charlotte to D.C., D.C. to New York and then New York back to D.C. I still have the ticket from NY to D.C. because I never went back. You can read my old post about the Amtrak ride here. Let’s just say Amtrak is not the most efficient way of traveling. It took us nearly 13 hours to get from Charlotte to D.C. If you can drive and don’t want to fly, just drive – it’s much quicker.



3. Speaking of New York, that’s another first. My first trip to the ‘Big Apple.’ I was in NYC from February until the middle of March before I returned home. Looking back, I could write an entire series on every aspect of New York, but let’s just sum it up in one word: Amazing! Living in New York for the short time that I was there was beyond my wildest dreams. Most movies and pictures I’ve seen don’t really do it justice. It’s something everyone needs to experience for themselves firsthand. One thing that amazed me most about New York is how many people live in the city. With population of 8 million over 468.9 sq miles of city compared to Columbia, SC which has a population of 129,333 and the city covers 133.8 sq miles. The density of New York mind-boggling. When I returned to Charlotte for the first time, it amazed me how much more “breathing room” there was. If I get the opportunity to return to New York or D.C. and spend a few years there, I will be going.



4. 2010 was also the first year I flew on a plane. Amazing right? I use be afraid to fly on a plane, but after my first few trips to and from New York, I was able to conquer those. Then after joining SCPC, I was flown out to Denver and up to Cleveland. Flying isn’t really that bad. I’m sure it’s worse now with TSA pat-downs, but I had no trouble going through the back scatter machine at the airport. The worst part about flying though is the layovers in airports. If you can, always fly direct it’s totally worth it!



5. Denver was my first trip out west. When I first arrived at the airport, I had no clue where we were. I expected Denver to be more mountainous, like Asheville’s airport. Instead, we just landed in a field and drove 30 minutes into town. Denver was amazing. The land in the Rocky Mountain National Forest is so open and vast! The temperature change from downtown Denver (90) to the top of RMNF (52) was a little drastic, something I wasn’t prepared for. While in Denver I also went to my first Major League Baseball game and a concert at Red Rocks.
6. I also went to Cleveland and visited the Great Lakes Brewing Company and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I wish I had more exciting things to say, but we were at a conference the entire time, so I didn’t really get to go out and explore, but I did learn a lot at the conference.

Ok, it’s time to get serious about this site, no really!

Starting next week I’ll be doing a weekly column every Friday called online tools for small news organizations.

Since I’ve worked in small and medium sized newspapers my whole life, this is the market that I know best. I also know online journalism tools pretty well. I’m also fed up with crappy news sites that just don’t work.

So I’m going to give back to society and do my civic good. I’m going to share everything that I know with you.

This will serve as an online repository for all my collective knowledge. I’m going to help you build and produce a better online news site with a small or limited budget.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a small daily, weekly or even a nonprofit, this will help you improve your online presence.

Next week’s post will focus on building a content management system through WordPress.

When newspapers were still king, CEO’s loved to tout how many “subscribers” their print circulation carried. 1.5 million daily and 3 million on the weekend was something to really be proud of. Bigger numbers mean higher rates for advertisers. ‘Look at all the eyeballs that will see your ads’ they exclaimed, when secretly, they knew not everyone was reading every single page of the paper. How could they?

When website tracking and analytics came along, it blew everything publishers knew out of the water. ‘What do you mean this story on ‘A-1′ only got 500 pageviews?? THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE!’ they cried. Little did they know how many people actually read their stories.

If newspapers’ A-1 were composed of front page stories driven by daily analytics, we would see a very different section front.

If CEO’s salaries were tied to the well-being of online news sites, we would see a very different type of care and compassion for how well online sites perform.

So what’s wrong with page-view journalism? If you’re approaching it from a very straightforward numbers only point of view, there’s nothing wrong. You can tell your advertisers that you get 1.5mil pageviews per day. But just like the old days, you’ll be leaving out some very key selling points for those advertisers.

Consider if you will a site that gets a reasonable amount of traffic, around 500,000 pageviews per day. This site has a bounce rate of 65%, users stay on average for less than one minute and the regular depth of visits are only 1-2 pages. Wouldn’t it be better to have a site with 300,000 pageviews, a bounce rate of 9% where users stay an average of 10 minutes and their depth of visit is between 10 and 15 pages?

Heck, if I were a journalist, I would have an adwords account that used time segmentation and a bunch of crazy keywords to drive tons of traffic to my stories just to make me look good. On the flip side, if the bounce rate to your stories is 100% is that really a good thing?

Old ways of measuring traffic

Previously, you would be inclined to measure your traffic with the following stats:

• Pageviews
• Unique Visitors
• Bounce Rate
• Exit Rate
• Content by title
• Popular time of day

These metrics give you some very basic ideas of what’s going on around your site. They answer the Who, What, When and Where. What’s missing from this equation? The Why

Outcomes and Conversion Rates

One of the goals of your news website should always be improved outcomes and conversion rates. Your tracking funnels and goals aren’t you? If you don’t have goals, you need to think long and hard about what you want your site to do. This isn’t the same thing as your mission statement. These goals directly affect your bottom line. It doesn’t matter if your site is an E-commerece site or not, your bottom line will always be money.

One of the most simple goals you can have is to get new visitors to subscribe to your newsletter. If they’re tech savvy, you’ll one them to subscribe to your RSS feed. Having someone choose to receive your content is sort of the holy grail for news sites. RSS subscribers are usually some of your most dedicated readers and subscribers. They’ll most likely be willing to support your site through purchases or donations.

Another way to look at traffic is by segmenting your traffic. Your three main categories of traffic will be Direct Traffic, Search Traffic and Referral Traffic. You should also segment your traffic into social media, email and RSS campaigns. Not tagging and following campaigns will result in inaccurate results for Direct Traffic. This could give you a completely different view of what’s going on with your site.

Segmenting your traffic can also help you establish your Conversion Rates for goals. It will let you know where your most valuable traffic is coming from. It will also let you measure how you can increase conversions for other types of traffic. You might find that direct traffic is most likely to donate money to your site or buy one of your products while search engine traffic and referrals are simply passerby’s. Referral traffic is also a good source to help you accomplish your first goal of signing up for email updates or subscribing to your RSS feed.

New ways of measuring traffic

Consider if you will these new metrics for traffic:

• Visitor loyalty
• Depth of visit
• Recency
• Length of visit

These metrics, while seemingly irrelevant, will actually build a very important picture for your site: Engagement. Why is facebook so popular? Because if people could, they would spend all day on it. It’s an extension of their physical social lives. I’m not suggesting you build a news site that everyone would want to spend all day on, that would be silly. I’m suggesting that you look at an aggregate total of engagement on your site. If designed and maintained properly, people will start to frequent your site more often. Things like related posts, social media tools, comments, and a strong user community give readers incentive to return.

If your site is slow, hard to navigate, or doesn’t have a good internal site search, you’re S.O.L. and it needs to be fixed A.S.A.P.

Conclusion

Using goals, outcomes and conversion rates, you’ll be able to increase your visitor loyalty, depth of visit and recency. When you couple those numbers with pageviews and present your advertisers how engaged your most valuable customers are, you’ll be presenting them with a true snapshot of what’s going on with your site.

If you would like to read my previous post, you can find it here. It goes into more depth than this post explaining more of the transparency cycle.

Hopefully this will serve as a reference guide for those looking to post their data such as check registers online.

All data should be machine readable

1. The basic reason to post data online is to inform citizens.
2. PDF’s are good for scanned pages, they are bad when they’re from computer generated programs.
3. Data is much more useable when it’s in a machine readable format such as a csv file. It makes it easier for developers and designers to massage data into a format they need.
4. Extracting information from PDF’s can be tedious and labor intensive. It’s easier to provide an open standard format for people to use.

All data is dirty

1. The main question when releasing data is always: What if we release the wrong info?
2. Data can be incorrect. Names can be misspelled, numbers can be input wrong, descriptions can be off.
3. When working with data, always go to the source. Double check your sources.
4. When exporting data, choose which information will best suit your consumers needs. The more information you can include, the better.

All data needs context

1. Schools, government and municipalities needn’t waste time giving data context. Allow developers to take your information and do that for you.
2. Developers need an easy way to access your information. CSV files and API’s are a developers best friend.
3. Designers can work together with developers to best highlight data and make it more meaningful.
4. If you feel compelled to give your data context, show examples highlighting your dataset. For example, how much did your school district spend per month on lodging and meals. How much as your government spent on cell phones and technology?

All data needs a central storage location

1. Storing pdf’s by month on the same page is a good start, it gives people a way to categorize things, but is bad for computers.
2. Data should be stored in a publicly accessible database such as socrata.
3. Storing your data in socrata will centralize information, allowing for quicker, easier access to material.
4. Databases should have methods of exporting data: JSON, REST, CSV.

All data needs action

1. While pushing to have more information online is great, if no actions result from publishing, what good is it?
2. Engaged citizens and advocacy groups need a way to export and share their findings through social media.

Further Reading: For more in-depth reading about data check out these resources.

1. Civic Commons/OpenMuni Wiki: A great resource for any municipality looking to make the leap into the digital world. Case studies, best and worst practices and more.
2. The five stars of open linked data: The father of the internet, Tim Berners-Lee explains why he wants to build a new internet using linked data and what we need to do to get there.
3. Socrata: A free and paid service for municipalities to store their data online. Their basic service is free and prices increase depending on needs.
4. The transparency cycle: From the sunlight foundation. This graphic and blog post explains why we must all work together.
5. The eight principles of open government data: Government data shall be considered open if the data are made public in a way that complies with these eight principles.

Recently, SCPC wrote about the problem with online check registers in county school districts. As more and more data is placed online, we need a way to standardize data so that has context and it’s not just sitting there. That’s what we would call ‘naked transparency.’

The naked transparency movement marries the power of network technology to the radical decline in the cost of collecting, storing, and distributing data. Its aim is to liberate that data, especially government data, so as to enable the public to process it and understand it better, or at least differently.

Before we rally the troops, we have to realize that getting more data, data that we own, from government officials on all levels doesn’t equal more transparency or accountability.

Data is only part of the Transparency Cycle

In a blog post by the Sunlight Foundation, they posted a very interesting graphic that shows how the ‘Transparency Cycle’ works. It has no beginning or end because it’s part of an ongoing process. Government Agencies (State Ethics Board) for example, are responsible for organizing data and giving web developers API’s who work with Graphic Designers who Give data context by visualizing it. Designers work with Journalists who help build public awareness through context and raising public awareness by reporting anomalies. Engaged Citizens work with Advocacy Groups who Organize and take action to hold the public and lawmakers accountable for what’s going on in government.

Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the internet has envisioned a new type of web, one of linked data, where the dots are able to be connected. Berners-Lee gives five points of open linked data.

1. make your stuff available on the web (whatever format)
2. make it available as structured data (e.g. excel instead of image scan of a table)
3. non-proprietary format (e.g. csv instead of excel)
4. use URLs to identify things, so that people can point at your stuff
5. link your data to other people’s data to provide context

State Comptroller Richard Eckstrom’s state government spending transparency site accomplishes 4 of the 5 goals, a great accomplishment in my opinion. Our school websites on the other hand, meet only one of the 5 requirements. PDF’s with no structure, give engaged citizens no way to ingest and analyze more than one month worth of data.

I was able to go in and scrap a PDF off of Berkley County’s transparency website and run the information through Many Eyes to get this chart that’s featured below. Ideally, there should be a simpler way for a developer or designer to visualize this information through API’s.

Eckstrom’s website is faced with the same type of problem. It focuses on the month to month expenditures, and if I want to build a database, I would have to download 12 separate .csv files to enter into another database to visualize.

All data is dirty

Once we’re able to actually collect data through publicly accessible API’s, does that necessarily mean the info is clean? Not really.

Since data input still relies on human-beings we are all prone to make mistakes. Remember the disaster of recovery.gov? There was a huge scandal because of all of the ‘ghost’ districts where money was being spent. The to main views here are simple “It happened on purpose, democrats are trying to steal/take our money” or “It was just a simple mistake, a slip of the finger or some congressional page didn’t know what district they were in.”

Also, if you browse the transparency data portal from the Sunlight Foundation and look for campaign contributions, names can be misspelled and instead of using proper nouns for occupation such as “Owner: Fast Bucks” a donor may simply list occupation as “store owner.”

This can lead to a few errors. It makes it hard to track who’s actually giving because a researcher will have to double check which company the donor works for to help connect the dots.

Data needs context

Once the data is published, it still needs context. PDF’s are good for looking at a small record, but what if we want to compare values over a given year, or the past six years? How do we know when a company a lobbyists represents gives a lawmaker money for his PAC so that he may be influenced to vote a certain way?

Spending all day pouring through massive amounts of information can be tedious and lead to the wrong conclusions. Instead, there should be automated processes in place that alert people via email, text, tweet when anomalies arise. Like the internet, quietly working in the background, but always on.

Designers and reporters also play an important roll in this because they can help clarify misunderstandings someone may have.

Data doesn’t equal transparency

Once we get the data, it’s been check to be accurate, and given context all is not complete in the transparency cycle. Government could publish every single bit of data it has, recorded votes, transit information, gis maps, but what good will it do if it just sits there?

It’s up to engaged citizens and Advocacy Groups to take the information from Designers, Developers, Journalists and Bloggers and form grassroots movements to hold government responsible. Data without action is done for naught.

Once Citizens and Groups organize and take action, they along with others can work with Lawmakers to actually make a change.

Transparency alone will not lead to more accountability in government. Data.gov and recovery.gov are great examples, Federal government have given citizens monitoring tools.

In South Carolina, we face battles of our own. South Carolina Senate, comprised of only 46 people cannot simply decide if they’ll vote on the record because they say it’s unconstitutional. They’ve also argued that verbal roll-call voting takes too long, and I agree, it does. But there are solutions out there. Open-source software can be written so that bills, amendments and earmarks can be posted online 72 hours early for the public can expect them, then house and senate members could vote on the bills so that we can connect the dots to see where change and influence is happening.

The question that South Carolina faces is: Who’s going to be first in the Transparency Cycle?

While driving down I-26 to Asheville North Carolina last weekend, I noticed a sign that said “Project funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.” This was passed in 2009 under the Obama administration as a way to create jobs and promote investment and consumer spending during the recession. The measures of ARRA are worth about $787 billion.

The road sign got me thinking about acts that were passed as part of the New Deal: The Works Progress Administration (WPA) and The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). The WPA was created by President Roosevelt in 1935. Expenditures from 36-39 totaled nearly $7 billion. As a side note, my grandfather use to refer to the WPA as “We piddle around” for their lack of work.

The CCC was a public work relief program for unemployed men age 18-24 to provide development of natural resources in rural areas from 1933 to 1942.

In North Carolina, both the WPA and CCC helped build the Blue Ridge Parkway:

On June 30, 1936, Congress formally authorized the project as the “Blue Ridge Parkway” and placed it under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service. Some work was carried out by various New Deal public works agencies. The Works Progress Administration did some roadway construction. Crews from the Emergency Relief Administration carried out landscape work and development of parkway recreation areas. Personnel from four Civilian Conservation Corps camps worked on roadside cleanup, roadside plantings, grading slopes, and improving adjacent fields and forest lands. During World War II, the CCC crews were replaced by conscientious objectors in the Civilian Public Service program.

What does this have to do with technology?

The CCC and WPA were good ideas in the 1930′s, but there are new and greater demands that need to be met during our current recession. Government spending is at an all time high while red tape and bloat hinder a system that our founding fathers helped establish.

One of the main problems facing the government is a lack of innovation and creation with technology.

It’s time that we take the next step and create new agencies that will help bring us into the next era of a public and open government.

Large strides could be made by putting people to work in the technology sector of government. Designers, developers, community activist could all work in stride to help make how the government spends your money and help hold your elected officials accountable.

What could these jobs produce?

Designers across America for example could help redesign websites such as the South Carolina Governors Mansion website.

These jobs could help create databases of information that are publicly accessible by all. A good start would be to build a system for Roll Call voting as outlined in the South Carolina Policy Council’s 2009 transparency report. The US Senate has an XML feed of their votes available, a key piece of legislation that was championed by S.C. Senator Jim DeMint. Politico goes further into the pro’s and con’s of this.

Sites like scvotes should have API’s that work with counties GIS departments to report voting results for precints statewide in realtime on election night.

Any state ran or supported website should also make their analytics avaiable under FOIA laws. This could help determine the sites actually impact to cost ratio.

Copyright laws should also be updated and any text and photograph make publicly available. On the South Carolina Flim website for example, in the footer the following information appears:

Photographs and art on this website and any downloadable publications are copyrighted and cannot be reproduced without the written permission of the photographer and/or the South Carolina Film Commission. © 2010 by the South Carolina Film Commission, a division of SC Parks, Recreation and Tourism. All rights reserved.

All information on any taxpayer supported website needs to be licensed through a Creative Commons license. Government entities should also use open platforms such as drupal, django and share their code using Github.

SCPC also supports the idea of an online check registery. [PDF] After submitting FOIA’s to 85 district counties, 12 counties quoted an expense of more than $10,000 to complete the request.

A technological workforce reinvestment could help solve these problems by working with those 85 districts to move their financial records online using open linked data.

There are five stars to linked data: 1. make your stuff available on the web. (whatever format.) 2. make it avaiable as stuctured data (excel instead of pdf.) 3. use non-proprietary format ( csv, tab delimited instead of excel.) 4. Use urls to identify things, so that people can point to it. 5. link your data to other people’s data to provide context.

If you think about it, it’s a pretty simple idea. Why can’t citizens log in to one website and see a single view of their account with a city or state. (water, sewer, real estate, auto excise tax, registration, etc.)

All of this requires a massive amount of imagination and innovation, but it has to start from the ground up. People need to learn that they have just as much control of what happens in government as the people they elect. The media does a good job of informing what’s happening in government, but they miss a great opportunity when it comes to educating people on how to make changes.

In conclusion, it’s time to take a serious look at the types of projects we’re funding with ARRA and look for ways to promote real change through a digital workforce reinvestment.

I’ve seen enough articles about Nick Carr’s and Clay Shirky’s back and forth rhetoric over the internet making you dumber and smarter. Surprise, surprise, they’re both publishing books very soon (disclaimer: I plan on buying both because I like their work).

I think a lot of newspapers are missing the point of what these articles are saying. Instead of bickering back and forth about using readability or actually using links in articles, what I would like to see is more people encouraging newspapers to actually use links!

I’ve visited quite a few South Carolina based media companies this week, searching for their RSS feeds for my new job and their sites have a long way to go. Some papers like The New York Times do decent jobs at creating topic pages, which I’m a fan of, but there are very few outgoing links to other, competing websites.

When would this be helpful?

For beginners, linking out to other sites helps define you as an authority on news. It’s showing your readers that “hey we don’t know everything, but we’ll show you who does, and we’ll show you where you can find it.” Be a link authority in your community and at your paper.

How can we get started?

If you’re a reporter, you should have a delicious account. Delicious is a free online bookmarking service that allows you to store links online and tag this with specific keywords. You could do this with every story that you write, with items that you’re following or as your own personal clipping service. Here’s my delicious account.

Another option is to use Publish2. I used publish2 while at The State when the Boeing news story broke to aggregate stories from around the U.S. on Boeing’s big news in S.C. It received a lot of high praise for including supporting stories.

What should we do next?

Your next step is to talk to someone in your online department. More than likely, they’ll be willing to add the links as assets to your story (hopefully). If you have a system like CCI or some other offline system, it might add them for you automatically. You should also requests for your online CMS to your website and ask your Online Editor to let you go in and manually add the links yourself, you may get shot down, but you won’t know unless you try.

In conclusion:

Stop talking about how the internet is making us uber ADD and just look at it for what it is: a way to make the world more connected through a simple use of an HTML link.