I’ve mined some website data from the dates the conference took place using Google Analytics and compiled them for your consideration and/or interest.
The site was accessed by an average of 200.25 unique visitors per day (roughly the number of conference participants). During their visits to the site 5,341 pages were viewed. Interestingly the highest number of page views was before the main program got started; on Tuesday June 22, there were almost 1900 page views. I assume that people were doing their research on the program and what sessions they were going to attend before the conference started.
Photo by Raj Boora
Gone are the days where IE reined supreme. For web developers this is interesting to consider; 10 years ago you made it look good on IE and tried to make it work on other browsers. Now there’s no real front-runner. This site is powered by WordPress and one of the reasons we decided to go that route is because it ability takes care of browser compatibility, right out of the virtual box. Here are the top four browsers that accessed the site (Blackberry’s browser accounted for 0.69%):
- Firefox 37.95%
- Safari 29.21%
- Internet Explorer 26.09%
- Chrome 4.12%
Apple has always been more prevalent in education circles than the general populace. If you add up all the Apple made devices it’s just one percent less than the percentage of windows based devices. Also of interest, mobile devices made up almost 1 in 5 visitors.Visitors accessed the site with the following OS’s.
- Windows 49.19%
- Macintosh 31.21%
- iPod 7.24%
- iPhone 6.49%
- iPad 3.37%
- Linux 1.62%
- BlackBerry 0.62%
- Android 0.25%
Finally, the top viewed pages consisted of daily schedules, mobile schedules, the conference at a glance, and home page. This is what I would have expected to be the case.
Google Analytics has been invaluable; should you organize a conference or build a website for your faculty/organization I highly recommend looking into it. We decided against having a printed program early on and it would seem that this move was not overly detrimental to the conference, nor was it a substantial barrier to individuals accessing session and program information. Additionally, we received tremendous feedback on the printed mini-program and I would certainly generate those again. They’re still faster than a mobile device (even the iPhone 4).
