[Sigia-l] sitepath diagramming - comparing biased views?

[Bernie Goldbach]

Hi,

In my experience, most people who visit and then complete a transaction on 
a Web property begin their clickstream a minimum of two directories below 
the root of the webiste.

Although Christina's Blueprints are instructive, my money is made by 
focusing on the main activity strands. In my case, that means knowing how 
an arrival from Google (insert Yahoo, Hotbot, AltaVista or FAST depending 
on your preference) moves towards a transaction. I want to ensure that 
"personas" arriving from search engines move towards transactions, such as 
searching inside the site, making a comment, signing up for a newsletter or 
buying a product.

Site navigation should encourage transactions. The same site navigation 
would encourage transactional behaviour on the part of people entering 
through the front page of the site. People arriving through the front 
appreciate an internal search function that works.

My exercises in enthnography begin at the keyword or phrase that enticed 
someone to arrive. If your referrer string tells you what they were 
thinking when they landed on your site, your site could feature an 
automatic database routine that provided the visitor with  more pages like 
the one they were looking for on arrival. The on-site search engines will 
reward you for writing succinct meta content (good titles, headlines, and 
on-topic vocabulary for the first 40 words).

Before I sought an alternative POV, I would determine whether people had an 
alternative measure of merit. I haven't found a better metric than 
transactional behaviour. After all, if they buy when they arrive, you're 
retained to replicate the event.

Right so,
Bernie in Kilkenny
www.topgold.com/blog/