BoatDesign.net

[Nomad]

The Forums look different. Is it just me??

[Jeff]

Hey - I'm glad you noticed!

Just some minor cosmetic tweaking to the forum homepage, but I hope it looks a little "crisper" and more modern than it did.

--caught playing with the buttons and levers again

[Nomad]

It looks better, really!!!!!! Nice work.
Also hows the PowerBoatListings.com site doing?? I stop in every now and then, also put some boats on. it seems to be doing good

[Polarity]

Ha! I was just wondering the same.. It does make a great difference Jeff, looks really good. Anyone would think you're a designer or something!...

Paul

[Jeff]

Thanks Paul! Thanks Michael!

[duluthboats]

[Jeff]

Also hows the PowerBoatListings.com site doing??

Honestly, slower than expected. I'm a little embarrassed that I haven't had more time to put into developing it.

Even though I haven't done much to promote it over the past few months, the traffic seems ok so at least it is getting some use:

Total Requests : 6570223
Total Page Requests : 209991
Total Bytes Served : 78781822560
Distinct Hosts Served : 46865
Distinct Files Served : 37373

Monthly Summary Analog server stats
May 2002 : 556,113 Hits : 19,685 Pages
Jun 2002 : 653,870 Hits : 22,504 Pages
Jul 2002 : 866,202 Hits : 29,030 Pages
Aug 2002 : 623,603 Hits : 20,648 Pages
Sep 2002 : 913,117 Hits : 27,222 Pages
Oct 2002 : 705,626 Hits : 21,273 Pages
Nov 2002 : 690,562 Hits : 20,748 Pages
Dec 2002 : 603,801 Hits : 19,297 Pages
Jan 2003 : 839,210 Hits : 25,423 Pages

There are a few drawbacks at present:
-the search needs some work
-I need to come up with an automated system to purge no longer valid records - it would be nice to have a system that emailed people monthly requiring a simply reply "yes" if they still want their listing listed... if not automatically delete.
-since people email or phone the seller direct, there's no way at present for me to gauge how effective the site is at actually selling a given boat... many that are removed are probably also sold due to other means.

I also haven't determined exactly how it will ever produce revenue - the initial goal was to get the two listings domains to generate a little revenue to buy things for this site (for example a second server would be nice as a backup). Maybe if the traffic is there I'll sell listings on the front page and then have the free listings following that. There might be enough other free listings sites though that not enough people would go for a pay listing - not sure.

One of these days I should spend some time improving that site a bit, but for now it's going along on its own waiting for me to put some more time into it.

[Willallison]

Re PowerBoatListings.com

After reading above, thought I'd give it a go Jeff - as a computer illiterate, I reckon it's simple to navigate and easy to list on (I whacked my Sea Ray on there) So it's all thumbs up from me...

[Jeff]

Thanks Will

We'll see what kind of response you get. As I said, I'm not sure what the conversion rate is for traffic to inquiries to sales on a listings site like this. So we'll see

[Jeff]

And for comparison, last months stats from this site (the stats at the top are for boatdesign.net with the page views uncorrected and thus a little high because of spiders, bots, the Microsoft SQL worm on the 27th I believe, etc. and the MRTG graphs at the bottom are for the server as a whole which includes boatdesign.net , powerboatlistings.com , sailboatlistings.com , yachtdesign.info , and a few other small sites.)

[Jeff]

Originally posted by duluthboats

Thanks Gary! Now with all these positive comments I guess I'd better put some time into working on the rest of the site too tomorrow

Thanks everybody!

[Nomad]

Finally!!!!!

[Jeff]

(big grin)

[Laz]

So you think that this is a lunchtime activity for many of us?

I write for www.guitarnoise.com, and each month we track the number of "unique visitors" (400K) and the average number of hits/clicks per visitor (30). We also track the number of hits for each article, which guides us with our lessons and other content.

Stats are fun!

-Laz

[Jeff]

I'm very happy with the mix of professionals, students, and beginners here. I think we're starting to have a great group of folks and the discussion should get better and better.

I really appreciate all the professionals who take time out to help everyone, and I appreciate the students and newcomers for asking and discussing interesting things and making it a place where people can talk about anything relating to boats and boat design freely. I like to take every opportunity I can to say thanks because I appreciate all the people here making these forums what they are.

Hopefully as we continue to grow we’ll see our stats get that high too

--and yes they are, as long as they continue to rise