Politix.ie design and analytics report.

Assessment Submission Form – MIS10040: Web Design and Analytics

1. Planning and Preparation

Proposition Development

Who are our customers or audience?Our primary target market are young people who are eligible to vote and are looking for information on Ireland’s political landscape and parties. We offer them the chance to compare and contrast all the different policies from the parties and help them come to an informed decision. Our services include a detailed breakdown of the parties’ values histories and policies. We also offer an explanation of the political spectrum, links to various other youth organisations and details on how to register to vote.

Keyword Discovery

Generate a list of search words and phrases that users might use to find our site. Irish Politics Labour Party How to Vote in

IrelandIrish legislations

& ActsInformation for

VotersPolitical Website

Political parties 1916 Rising How to Get Involved in Irish

Politics

Political Science Irish Government

Irish Political Life

Political Spectrum Young Fine Gael

Irish General Election

Political Left Civil War Political life

Political History Ogra Dail Members Ireland

Political Right Political Ideologies

Party Politics

Irish Political Parties

Irish Politics Independents

Dail Political Analysis

The Most Important

Political Party in Ireland

Political Policy Analysis

Fine Gael Irish Political System

United Left Alliance

Political Ideology in

Ireland

Political Positions

What Are Politics

Fianna Fail Republic of Ireland

Irish Youth Politics

Get Involved into politics

Liberal politics About politics

Sinn Fein How Irish Politics Work

Civil Rights Political Viewpoint

Progressive Politics

Women in Politics

Irish Political Parties Policies

Irish Political Spectrum

Irish Political History

Irish Political Analysis

Independents Irish Independents

Fianna Fail Policies Sinn Fein Policies

Fine Gael Policies

Labour Party Policies

Irish Political Policies

United Left Alliance Policies

Green Party Green Party Policies

Irish Politicians Enda Kenny An Taoiseach Eamonn Gilmore

Keyword Analysis

Balancing the keyword popularity to determine overall opportunity. Compare with top 5 competitor’s web sites.Having scanned the Online Irish Political Information market closely, we concluded that our product is, for the most part, original. The majority of Irish Political websites offer either Current Affairs News or a forum where Current Affairs could be discussed. Therefore, as a result of our original product, the opportunity for high traffic creation is relatively high.

However, although our product may differentiate us from our competitors, we believe that in terms of keywords there is little difference between us. Ultimately, Politix.ie will want to attract the same audience as that of our competitors. Thus, the importance of keywords such as “Irish Politics”, “Fianna Fail Policies”, or “Irish Political Parties”, will be as important for Politix.ie as it would be for any of our competitors.

Having analysed our market, the following websites were determined to be our main competitors:

List of Competitor Websites

Website name: Most popular keywords used:http://www.politics.ie/ Irish politics, News & Current affairs website,

Featuring breaking news, Discussion & reaction from politics In Ireland.

http://www.boards.ie/ (politics part) Politics, Ireland, Irish, chat, forum, forums, discussion, bulletin board, ask, share, information.

Http://www.politico.ie/ Irish Politics, Ireland, Politics, Current Affairs, Tonight with Vincent Browne, Irish News, Media, Irish Politicians, Dail.

http://www.kildarestreet.com/ Parliament, Ireland, Dublin, Kildare Street, TD, TDs, Senator, Senators, Debates, Parliamentary Record, Dail.

http://www.peoplesrepublicofcork.com/ (forum – political part)

News & Current affairs website, Featuring breaking news.

From analysing our competitor’s use of keywords we concluded that they do not have the best keyword strategy in place. For the most part, they only use a select few of the most popular keywords related to their websites. There are even some cases, where their choice of keyword is not optimal. For example, www.politics.ie is a forum for discussing political current affairs, yet neither the “Political Forum” nor “Irish Political Forum” is included in its keywords.

From analysing all of our competitors as a group the most popular keywords utilised are as follows:

- Irish politics - Political news- News & current affairs- Ireland

It can be concluded that our assumption of having similar keywords to that of our competitors was incorrect, and in fact, only the main political words offer similarities. Politix.ie utilises a vastly superior quantity and quality of keywords, which thus gives us a competitive advantage. Furthermore, as our website encompasses several different aspects of politics, from parties to spectrums, we will be using these additional keywords which will once again give us an advantage over our competitors.

Overall, based on the comparison with our competitors, it can be concluded that the quality and quantity of keywords offered by Politix.ie is of a superior quality.

Keyword Deployment:When developing our keyword strategy we carefully studied our website content and attempted to link the most popular keywords to the content. For example the top five keywords listed above will be included on the main page and the second most important page – political parties.

As can be seen from the image below, one of the most popular keywords, “Political Parties”, is a title for one of our web pages. Furthermore, “Irish Political History” is also included in the title bar.

As can be seen from the image below, “Political Parties” once again features as a header for this page. Other keywords of both primary and secondary importance are also visible on the page.

Keyword Prominence:Keyword prominence denotes how close to the start of an area of a page that a keyword appears. As can be seen from the image below, it can be said that the keywords/phrases are situated close to the beginning or end of each sentence. In comparison to our competitors, we believe we did a good job in terms of keyword prominence.

Keyword Proximity:Keyword proximity denotes how close keywords are to each other on web pages. As can be seen from the examples shown on the next page, in the majority of cases we also managed to ensure very good keywords proximity.

Keyword DensityKeyword density denotes the ratio (percentage) of keywords contained within the total number of indexable words within a web page. Thanks to good word choice, management and planning we managed to keep the keyword density under 10% in every single case. For example, on the home page we have a total of 192 words, 13 of which are keywords. Thus, the home page has a keyword density of 6.7%. Another example of good keyword density management is shown in the “Political Parties” page. There are 225 words in total on the page including 20 keywords, which accounts for 8.8% of the total number of words. Overall, we are confident that Google will not classify our website as spam and thus we will not be penalized.

Moreover, most of the keywords utilised connected users with our main pages including: Political history, Get involved, Political parties and Home page. These keywords will link users with the content of the website which, we believe, is instantly easily found by users. This will, in theory, increase the amount of new users and keep the bounce rate at the minimum level.

Overall, we believe that our keyword proximity, density and prominence strategies will increase our page ranking and surpass that of our competition.

2. The SEO campaign Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine's "natural" or un-paid search results. Traditionally, SEO is split into two categories, on page optimisation and off page optimisation.

On Page OptimizationOn-page optimization refers to factors that have an effect on the website listing in natural search results. In other words, on page optimisation includes everything done to optimise the website internally, thus it is controlled by the coding on your page. Examples of on-page optimization include actual HTML code, Meta tags, keyword placement and keyword density. In contrast, off page optimisation refers to everything done externally to optimise the websites search engine performance. This includes link-building, social media, etc.

As mentioned in the previous section, we believe our on page optimisation was to a high standard. Our keywords, keyword placement, keyword proximity and keyword density were all concluded to be superior to that of our competitors. Thus, we believe we have been successful in this area.

Page Rank and Landing LinksGoogle’s PageRank algorithm ranks the importance of every individual page it has found on the web in relation to the search. Every page is assigned a ranking, from 1 through 1, with the most important pages, like Google.com, being given a 10. All other pages scale downward from there. The higher the sites ranking, the higher it will appear on Google’s search results and thus the greater success the site will have.

In order to improve a site’s PageRank more inbound links need to be developed to the site. In other words, other pages and sites need to have links to your pages and site. Specifically, Google considers each link to a site a vote for the site. The more votes you have, the more popular your site will be.

The popularity of the sites that have inbound links is also a major factor. The more votes obtained from popular sites, the better off the site will be. Furthermore, the page ranks of the sites with the inbound links also matters. Preferably these sites will have higher PageRank’s than your own.

It is, however, more important to look at the PageRank of the actual linking page, not the home page, of that other site to your own. It is important to note that it is PageRank, not Site Rank. This means that PageRank throughout the course of a site can have varying values.

In order to increase our page rank we are planning on linking our site with those of several youth political parties in Ireland. Thankfully, one of the members of our team is leader of

UCD Young Fine Gael, thus the possibility of this happening is high. Furthermore, by contacting other political, informative, and education websites we believe we will be able to increase our page rank. For the time being, by including a link to our site on various user-generated content sites, such as Wikipedia, will have to suffice for improving our page rank.

Paid Search: AdwordsGoogle AdWords is Google's main advertising product and Google’s main source of revenue. Its success is unquestionable with Google's total advertising revenues reaching USD$28bn in 2010. AdWords operates a pay-per-click model, i.e., cost-per-click (CPC) advertising, cost-per-thousand-impressions or cost-per-mille (CPM) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for text, banner, and rich-media ads. AdWords can be used locally, nationally, and/or internationally depending on the advertisers preference.

Google’s most sophisticated form of advertisement is text advertisements. These advertisements are short in length, consisting of one headline consisting of 25 characters and two additional text lines consisting of 35 characters each.

In future once our website is fully operational we plan to purchase a small amount of advertising with Google AdWords in order to help establish the site, increase the page ranking and therefore increase the number of hits. However, these AdWords will not be purchased from the perspective of a business investment as our website does not offer a purchasable product, thus potential return on investment is low. Moreover, as our site is generally an informative one, it is unlikely that there’ll be a demand for advertisements. However, if we do generate enough users then this would become a distinct possibility.

Making the Map: Local search, Google maps, language optimisationLocal search optimisation involves ensuring that your website appears in the top hits of an internet search such as a Google search in your specific local area. In our case the specific local area is Ireland. This is obviously a top priority for any website as the majority of hits a website receives will be through internet searches by our target market.

In order to ensure significant hits on internet searches we firstly had to establish keywords which our target market would likely enter into a search engine. Once we had decided on these keywords, as seen previously, we endeavoured to include the correct quantity of these words in the website content, and meta-tags. This should ensure that any young person who does an internet search looking for information on Irish politics, how to vote, or how to get involved in Irish politics, should be directed towards our site.

Secondly, we are in the process of getting the website featured on the websites of several of Ireland’s young political parties, as well as political forums and other relevant sites in order to in order to increase our sites page rank. This process will ensure our site is linked to as many high profile websites as possible, and that our target market becomes aware of our website.

In terms of Google Maps, as we currently do not have a physical location to tag ourselves on, we cannot avail of this SEO tool. Upon finding a location which we are legally allowed to use, this tool will be implemented.

The language of our site is also optimised to ensure significant hits on Google searches from our target market. As our sole focus is Irish politics, the English language is all that’s required. Moreover, as mentioned previously, our keyword selection was carefully chosen to a high standard, thus we have taken full advantage of language optimisation.

3. Tracking and Tuning

Which pages are effective and which are not; The most effective page at the moment is the political parties’ web page. It currently has an average page length view of 0 minutes and 49 seconds which is perfect for a navigation page with a small amount of information on each possible navigation choice.

Another effective page is the Irish Political History page, with an average page length view time of 1 minute and 3 seconds. Once again as this is a navigation page with a small amount of information on each possible navigation choice available, this time length is acceptable. Moreover, with an exit rate of 4.88%, the majority of users have clearly found what they are looking for and moved on to further pages.

The least effective page on the website at the moment is the home page with an average page length view of 1 minute and 35 seconds. Although this page is pleasant on the eye, and there are a number of different sections to read about, 1 minute and 35 seconds is too long a time for the users to find what they are looking for. Although the average bounce rate of 35% is acceptable, the exit rate of 31.37% is too high and improvements need to be made to improve this.

Which pages are the most popular? A table of the most popular pages can be seen below:

Page Name Page Views Page Views (%)Index 112 39.86%Political Parties 51 18.15%Irish Political History 40 14.59%

It is no surprise that the home page is the most popular page on the website, as that is the page the majority of people would be referred to. The second most popular page, Political Parties, is one of the main features of the site thus; it is not surprising that this page is performing well. Finally, it is slightly surprising that the Irish Political History page is performing well, as there are more attractive pages on the site, however considering the amount of valuable content this page has, it is understandable.

What was the bounce rate?The bounce rate for our website was 40.43%, which although above Google’s optimum bounce rate of 30%, was significantly lower than the average bounce rate for a website in 2011 at 47%.

How long are visitors spending on these pages?On average, users spend approximately 5 minutes and 37 seconds on the site and approximately 1 minute and 9 seconds on each page. In comparison with the average time spent on a website, our statistics are particularly encouraging. According to Google, the average time spent on a website in 2011 was 5 minutes and 23 seconds, slightly below our amount.

What devices/browsers are users utilising?Approximately 29.7% of our views are from mobile devices, 86% of these views have come from iPhones and the remaining 14% from iPads.

Overall, the remaining 70.3% of views on the site have come through browsers. As can be seen from the chart below, the most popular browser is Google Chrome.

56%31%

13%

Percentage of Visits per Browser

ChromeSafariFirefox

Track geographic locations and traffic trends over timeLocation Percentage of VisitsDublin, Ireland 75%Dundrum, Ireland 20.8%Cork, Ireland 2.1%Birmingham, UK 2.1%

As can be seen from the table above our traffic has thus far mainly come from the Dublin area. This is of no surprise considering UCD’s location, the main source of traffic due to the on-going development process. The views from locations such as Cork and Birmingham have come from personal referrals from members of our team and we do not expect many UK online users to be interested in Irish Politics.

In the future we expect the traffic to be focused in Dublin, due to its large population; however we also expect other cities and towns throughout the country to feature prominently. As this site is politically and geographically unbiased, there is no reason as to why this would not be the case in the near future.

The current obstacles blocking this from happening include issues with the search engines which will be explained in the upcoming sections.

A full and realistic picture of your traffic at any point in time

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Number of Visits to the Site

Visits

Date

Number of Visits

As mentioned previously, as our site is in the nascent stage it would be pointless to calculate the average number of users per day. Once our site is firmly established, the greater amount and quality of analytical data can be put to better effect. Moreover, once the issues with the search engines, as mentioned below, are dealt with we believe the number of visits our sites receives will increase significantly.

Which search engine sends the most traffic to your site?As our website is currently hosted on 000webhost, and contains “webege” in the domain name, we currently cannot feature on any search engines. Google currently marks all website with “webege” in the domain name as spam due to previous malicious websites. However, we are in the process of obtaining the “Politix.ie” domain name, and thus this issue will not be a problem in the near future.

Analyze Conversion rates of keywords, landing pages and referrersAs a result of the above we cannot analyse the conversion rates of keywords, or referrers. However, once the solution to this issue is implemented, the analytical data will be utilised to its full effect.

We can however analyse our landing and exit pages. As can be seen from the pie chart below, the most popular landing page is undoubtedly our home page. The second highest

landing pages are Fianna Fail and the Independents. This came as a surprise to our team as the content on these webpages is quite specific, unlike the general home page.

90%

4%4%2%

Landing Pages

Home PageFianna FailIndependentsPolitical Specturm

As can be seen from the Exit Pages pie chart below the most popular exit page was the Home Page. As proven by the bounce rate, this does not mean people are coming to the site and then immediately leaving. Rather, it means that having searched the website, they then return to the home page to look for more content, and then leave upon not finding anything.

42%

18%

12%

6%

6%

4%4% 2%2%

Exit Pages

Home PagePolitical PartiesContact UsHistoryPolitical Spectrum1920Independents1910Fianna Fail

What changes did you make to your web site as a result of data gathered from Google Analytics?As a result of the data gathered from Google Analytics we made a number of changes to our website. Firstly, when we recognised that a high percentage of users were viewing the website from mobile devices, we decided to optimise the site for mobile. As can be seen from the image below, we brought in the borders of the page and optimised the size of the texts so it would be easier to

use on mobile. Moreover, we also made the buttons on the navigation menu larger so they would be easier to select on touch screens.

In the future, when issues regarding the search engine are solved, we will analyse the effectiveness of the chosen keywords, their density, and proximity. From previous initial analysis, we concluded that the words chosen, their density and proximity should be optimal in theory. Whether or not this will be the case in practice remains to be seen.