Monday, January 31, 2011
Reminder!
The Subatomic Particle Giveaway is still going on! Vote and comment on the giveaway post to be included! Because of the overwhelming response, there will be three winners who will get their own piece of free, handmade, geeky jewelry.
Friday, January 21, 2011
Stockholm Calling
I'm still here! I'm just on a short vacation to visit the boy in Stockholm. In the meantime, enjoy tales of my escapades from the last time I was here (in April of 2010), wherein we went to Finland.
(Here is the boy!)
Most of the time we spent bumming about Stockholm, which is one of my favorite cities in the world. I think it's absolutely gorgeous. One weekend we went out to Uppsala to visit his parents at their farm, along with his niece and nephew. And SHEEP! Very pregnant, fluffy sheep:
We also spent a few days in Finland, since it's so easy to get to from Stockholm.
Yes, we were ON A BOAT.
A fancy boat.
It was an overnight boat trip to get to Helsinki, a town small enough that you can walk the whole thing without much problem. We got off the boat at about 10 in the morning and made a beeline for our hotel on foot, taking in some of the city sights on the way.
We dropped off our bags and ventured out again, checklist in hand.
#1: The Finnish National Museum
#2: Tempelplatsens Kyrka
#3 Senate Square/Helsinki Cathedral
By the time we finished walking everywhere and seeing all we wanted to see, it was bedtime. The next day started with free breakfast at the hotel, and then the last item on our checklist, the Suomenlinna Sea Fortress. We checked out, grabbed our bags, and wandered down to the dock where we could catch the ferry to Suomenlinna.
Then some shopping in the market, and we were ready to go back to Stockholm.
In short: A+ would do again.
(Here is the boy!)
Most of the time we spent bumming about Stockholm, which is one of my favorite cities in the world. I think it's absolutely gorgeous. One weekend we went out to Uppsala to visit his parents at their farm, along with his niece and nephew. And SHEEP! Very pregnant, fluffy sheep:
We also spent a few days in Finland, since it's so easy to get to from Stockholm.
Yes, we were ON A BOAT.
A fancy boat.
It was an overnight boat trip to get to Helsinki, a town small enough that you can walk the whole thing without much problem. We got off the boat at about 10 in the morning and made a beeline for our hotel on foot, taking in some of the city sights on the way.
We dropped off our bags and ventured out again, checklist in hand.
#1: The Finnish National Museum
#2: Tempelplatsens Kyrka
#3 Senate Square/Helsinki Cathedral
By the time we finished walking everywhere and seeing all we wanted to see, it was bedtime. The next day started with free breakfast at the hotel, and then the last item on our checklist, the Suomenlinna Sea Fortress. We checked out, grabbed our bags, and wandered down to the dock where we could catch the ferry to Suomenlinna.
Then some shopping in the market, and we were ready to go back to Stockholm.
In short: A+ would do again.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
The Great Analytics Experiment, Part One
In an attempt to better my shop (and in the spirit of science), I'm undertaking a Google Analytics Experiment.
Hypothesis: Listing items based on top keyword results will result in more hits, lower bounce rates, more time on the site, and more pages per visit (or any combination thereof).
Step One: What are my top keyword results?
As it stands, here are the top five keyword searches (ranging from November 30th until now) that people were looking for when they found my shop:
People are clearly looking for two things here: pi jewelry and golden ratio jewelry. So, I'm going to shift the focus in my math jewelry just on the golden ratio and pi for the next round of listings. (I guess people have very little love for the square root of two, or the Feigenbaum constants. What a pity.)
Anything related to science or chemistry is curiously absent from that keyword list, but I think it's far more likely because I simply have more math items in my shop than I do science items.
Step Two: What are my stats like now?
There's lots of web traffic stats to look at. I'm going to focus on four areas, though I may whittle that down as I go along:
Total Visits is pretty obvious. So is Time on Site. Bounce Rate is how often people leave a page for somewhere else without clicking any further. It's calculated by dividing visits that lasted for only one page by the total number of visits. So, for example, if 100 people found my Etsy storefront and 60 of them continued to browse Etsy without clicking on any of my items or my profile, my store would have a bounce rate of 60%. Pages per Visit is also pretty obvious.
Why did I pick these stats?
They're all important, of course! You can't have any sales without any visits, period. So increasing Total Visits—whether repeat or new visitors—will increase your chance for a sale. And the longer those visitors are lingering in your shop, the more likely they are to buy something (and the more likely it is that they like what you do, and will consider buying in the future even if they don't on this visit). So you want the Time on Site to be pretty high, too. Likewise, if they're leaving after only one page, they probably don't like what they see all too much—so you want a low Bounce Rate as well as more Pages per Visit. My (shamefully low) stats from the same timespan, courtesy of Google Analytics, are as follows:
Step Three: Procedure
For the next month, I will focus on listing golden ratio and pi jewelry in my math section. Any new pieces I make will only be pi- or golden ratio-based. At the end of the month, I will see how the new data (from the date of the first listing until forty days after) compares.
Hypothesis: Listing items based on top keyword results will result in more hits, lower bounce rates, more time on the site, and more pages per visit (or any combination thereof).
Step One: What are my top keyword results?
As it stands, here are the top five keyword searches (ranging from November 30th until now) that people were looking for when they found my shop:
- pi earrings
- golden ratio necklace
- math jewelry
- pi bracelet
- golden ratio jewelry
People are clearly looking for two things here: pi jewelry and golden ratio jewelry. So, I'm going to shift the focus in my math jewelry just on the golden ratio and pi for the next round of listings. (I guess people have very little love for the square root of two, or the Feigenbaum constants. What a pity.)
Anything related to science or chemistry is curiously absent from that keyword list, but I think it's far more likely because I simply have more math items in my shop than I do science items.
Step Two: What are my stats like now?
There's lots of web traffic stats to look at. I'm going to focus on four areas, though I may whittle that down as I go along:
- Total Visits
- Time on Site
- Bounce Rate
- Pages per Visit
Total Visits is pretty obvious. So is Time on Site. Bounce Rate is how often people leave a page for somewhere else without clicking any further. It's calculated by dividing visits that lasted for only one page by the total number of visits. So, for example, if 100 people found my Etsy storefront and 60 of them continued to browse Etsy without clicking on any of my items or my profile, my store would have a bounce rate of 60%. Pages per Visit is also pretty obvious.
Why did I pick these stats?
They're all important, of course! You can't have any sales without any visits, period. So increasing Total Visits—whether repeat or new visitors—will increase your chance for a sale. And the longer those visitors are lingering in your shop, the more likely they are to buy something (and the more likely it is that they like what you do, and will consider buying in the future even if they don't on this visit). So you want the Time on Site to be pretty high, too. Likewise, if they're leaving after only one page, they probably don't like what they see all too much—so you want a low Bounce Rate as well as more Pages per Visit. My (shamefully low) stats from the same timespan, courtesy of Google Analytics, are as follows:
- 419 Visits
- 2.09 Pages/View
- 65.16% Bounce Rate
- 1:31 Average Time On Site
Step Three: Procedure
For the next month, I will focus on listing golden ratio and pi jewelry in my math section. Any new pieces I make will only be pi- or golden ratio-based. At the end of the month, I will see how the new data (from the date of the first listing until forty days after) compares.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Treasury: A New Year With Etsy
'Resolutions' by Kokoba
Everything you need to make your New Year's resolutions a reality! ....Or to ignore them entirely. ;)
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Sunday, January 2, 2011
Photography and IP
An excellent article by Carolyn E. Wright (of Photo Attorney) from Better Digital Photography: Top 10 Misconceptions about Photography and Copyright. The focus is mostly on photography as art (as opposed to photography as means of sale), but useful information still—not only for photographers but for visual artists of every stripe.
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