The Power of (Web) Design

It has been just about two weeks since I switched from a more conventional blog site design to this design. Previously, the blog contained a long column of links on the left and the last seven posts displayed on the main page. I chose this new design because I felt it worked better for the type of blogging I do: longer, more substantive posts a few times a month.

I’ve compared the two week period from before the switch with two weeks since. In terms of visits, traffic stayed constant. Since it takes time to build readership and my topic and frequency stayed about the same, I’d imagine this kind of change would take longer to appear. Other measures show some interesting results. First, the “bounce rate,” or the percentage of visitors who visit only one page on the website before leaving, declined from 70.4% to 63.61%. This decrease is very consistent, and after the change every day except three was below the previous average. The decline from the previous month’s average was about 9% This means more visitors are reading more on the site. The number of comments has also increased. The average number of comments on the 8 posts previous to the new design was 2.9 per post, and on the 8 since it was 4.6 per post.

Upcoming Conferences

I am planning to attend the following upcoming conferences:

Society for City and Regional Planning History Conference
October 25-28 – Portland, Maine ($150 for students)

Washington, D.C. Historical Studies Conference
Nov. 1-3 – Carnegie Library, Washington, D.C. (free)

American Historical Association Annual Meeting
Jan. 3-6, 2008 – Woodley Park, Washington, D.C. ($75 for students)

New Site Design

Readers will notice I’m experimenting with a new design for this website. What do you think?

Site Design Changes

You may have noticed some design changes to this website I made over the weekend. I widened the layout and greatly condensed the sidebar content, eliminating the blogroll and moving some of the old links to my archives page. I deleted the links partly because of what I read in this post about how they reinforce hierarchy, and partly because they were woefully outdated. I’ve chosen to expand the design to 800 pixels but not wider because about 15% of site visitors view the site at that resolution. Are there any other changes I should make?

I Want My Stuff Back

Inspired by this NY Times article, I decided to post this little announcement … Yesterday at the highly successful and fun monthly blogger meetup I host, my bag containing a notebook and my digital camera was stolen. It was taken between 9:00 and 10:30 PM from the outdoor seating area at Pharoah’s Rock N’ Blues in Adams Morgan, located at 1817 Columbia Rd. NW, Washington, DC 20009. The suspects who were loitering nearby just before the bag disappeared are two white males, estimated age 17-20 years. One approached us trying to sell a CD player, still in its original packaging.

The actual bag stolen was entirely dark blue, the camera is a Nikon Coolpix 2200 in a small black case, and the notebook is 8.5×5.5 in size, has a red cover, and contains miscellaneous notes. Give me my stuff back, you little punks!

Grad School

It’s official: I’m attending the Master of Community Planning program at the University of Maryland’s School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation in the fall. It’s a two year master’s program in urban planning that requires an internship and studio project in addition to the coursework. I will also be a TA for the freshman introductory course in the Landscape Architecture Program for the fall semester.

Needless to say I am quite excited!

We’re Back

This site has been dark for a few days after the server it lived on croaked. However, thanks to quick thinking by friend and tech guru Scott Trudeau, we are up and running on a new server. Thanks, Scott!