Web stats for Moray 2013

[Paul Frost]

Some interesting early analysis of web usage during the event, 27th July to 3rd Aug.
35Gb of bandwidth
200k pageviews (individual pages viewed)
Top 4 pages

70k home
41k results
18k euromeeting
6k competition-days

46k Visits (multiple pages viewed per visit)

46% from mobile devices (tablets & phones)
Split by brand

60% Apple
20% Samsung
5.3% HTC
2.8% Google

After looking at the analytics for the first few days I decided to strip the homepage of most images and concentrate the text to links. I hope that improved the speed that you could access the info you wanted. The downside is that the site doesn't look very attractive as a marketing portal for the event, but for those at the event that probably doesn't matter.

I'm keen to hear from people about how easy, or not, they found the navigation and presentation of the content. I wasn't responsible for the actual content, just how it was presented, but all views welcome. I want to better understand the needs and issues of users when at an event so I can try and ensure that the Highland 2015 experience is as good as I can make it.
Respond below or email me, web@scottish6days.com

[Adrian]

Removing the photos was a good idea - the site still looked good, although you could've replaced the beach at the top with a more active image. The emphasis on the homepage is ease of navigation which has to be good. On a lot of major event homepages I can't even find where to click for the results!

It was a bit irritating that I kept going first to the main S6D page, rather than the /2013 one. Shouldn't the url have been 2013.scottish6days.com or some such? It'd be good if the daily newsletter was available as html as well as pdf, and listed under News.

[Paul Frost]

The header photo was part of the design and theme that had flowed through print and web over the previous months. So changing it could have lost the event/brand identity that had become logged in peoples minds.
There were more active photos attached to each days entry, but those got lost in the stripped down version. The good news is that now the event is over and page loading time is not so critical I have re-vamped the home page to be more attractive again.

I'm not sure why you kept going to the S6D home page though. I tend to use a bookmark, or just leave the page open in a separate tab. Some browsers autocomplete based on recent history.
There has been thought before about setting the base 6 Days home page as the current event and doing away with any year in the url, but then how best to link to the generic 6 Days pages, what do you call them on a 1 or 2 word navigation button?

The newsletter was listed under News for a bit, but with new news getting added it kept moving down the list. Plus the thinking was to have all links related to a day together.

The problem with making the newsletter an HTML web page is that it is created in a desk top publishing app with being printed in mind. The HTML that those apps generate to convert to a web page is awful and would not have worked within the responsive layout of the website. My aim was to make the site be usable on any device and screen size.
Now the interesting debate would be should the newsletter be a web page in the first place, and a limited quantity of the page printed out for those without web access?

[Arnold]

Can't comment much on the S6D site as didn't use it much.

But I thought the JWOC site of this year was a fab best-in-class site. Easy nav by day at the top, but also an easy vertical section where you could see all the day's action in one place. Quickly updated links to maps, routes, interviews, splits etc. And it always worked.

The WOC site of this year, on the other hand, is a worst in class example for me. Not enough bandwidth, links all over the shop, the payment thing was a shambles and generally badly laid out.

[Scott]

Apart from the colour scheme, I still reckon that this is the best international orienteering event website I've seen from an armchair spectator's perspective.

[Paul Frost]

jwoc2013.cz site is dead and nothing useful on the Wayback Machine.

The EOC2012 site wasn't responsive to smaller screens, so not so good on smaller tablets or phones. You can't ignore those devices, as the stats above show, 46% of visits during the 6 Days.

[Arnold]

JWOC site is back and looks very similar to the EOC 2012 one
http://www.jwoc2013.cz/

But it might also look crap on mobile devices (not sure if they had a separate version and mostly accessed from home)

[pyrat]

Top job on the website Paul looks good and I found it easy to find results during the week.

Will there be live results at Highland 2015?

[Paul Frost]

The plan is to have live results and all the rest of the "Live" stuff. How we do it and the technologies involved is still open. Two years away is several lifetimes in the web world.