Over the last week or two, I have been engaging with Weebly, the providers of the web infrastructure that I utilise to host my website. Web site visit statistics were once again the reason for my dialogue. Earlier articles about the vagaries of visitor monitoring are available.
https://www.adrianbaldwin.net/blog/my-net-popularity-takes-a-dive-well-sort-of
https://www.adrianbaldwin.net/blog/dreaming-of-a-million
Once again, I had noticed a plummet in visitor numbers and in this instance, Weebly had also updated a whole month’s worth of trendline so that the drops were even more painful to view. See the image and you’ll understand my disappointment.
The first response from customer services on 2nd October was this:
“The problem you’re describing has been identified as a bug and is being investigated by our engineering team. I don’t have an ETA for when they’ll have the issue fixed, but someone will follow up with you as soon as we have an update. I’m very sorry you’ve run into this problem, and thanks for your patience while our team works to get this resolved.” 02/10/19
When I chased for further feedback, I then got back this:
“We have recently changed the way that we track analytics on our sites. Your previous traffic stats were not inaccurate, it just used a different counting methodology focusing on the number of times your site has been served / rendered, rather than the number of actual users that viewed your site. The newer metrics are more reflective of actual usage and a better point of comparison. The new Insights utilizes front-end tracking where a website visitor’s browser pings Weebly servers to report usage. This is the same methodology used by Google Analytics, and is designed to handle granular calculations. While this methodology has certain limitations as tracking can be disabled by an ad blocker, it is much closer to numbers rendered by Google Analytics, and is much less susceptible to over-counting.” 11/10/19
So, the first response from Ron was nonsense, and the second, from Jayme, depressing.
Why depressing, well if success is a structure, it has just come crashing down. The results hardly justify the investment, and it is probably time to give up and do something more productive with my time.
To make matters worse, this message arrived on 7th October -
Hi Adrian,
Your domain adrianbaldwin.net will automatically renew in 2 weeks! There's nothing more you need to do.
Thanks,
The Weebly Team
The timing positively comedic bearing in mind the exchanges going on at the time.
I am not best-pleased. The renewal might as well go ahead though because otherwise my site just vanishes. However, after almost eight years of internet presence, the longer-term outlook for my site is now rather bleak.
You can help if you like what you read on my site, you can share posts/links with your friends, add comments to articles, follow me on Twitter, retweet the stuff you like, go mad with your emoticon library etc.
Recovering something from the rubble of one’s dreams, brings me on to an article that I read recently. I thought it was heart-warming enough to be worth sharing with you too.
Jonjo Heuerman and his mum, Donna, have been reuniting commemorative bricks (circa 1,000) from the old, demolished, West Ham United, Boleyn Ground stadium with their original owners/sponsors.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-49884207
Please have a read if you missed the BBC news piece.
So, I find myself reflecting that good can come from investment even years down the line. Something positive may still come from the demolition of my visitor stats. Like West Ham, maybe a new stadium is needed. Or perhaps I’ll spend more time working on better promoting what is on the site already, rather than writing new content (that won’t get read if I don’t promote adrianbaldwin.net properly).
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Related posts
https://www.adrianbaldwin.net/blog/my-net-popularity-takes-a-dive-well-sort-of
https://www.adrianbaldwin.net/blog/dreaming-of-a-million
https://www.adrianbaldwin.net/blog/my-net-popularity-takes-a-dive-well-sort-of
https://www.adrianbaldwin.net/blog/dreaming-of-a-million
Once again, I had noticed a plummet in visitor numbers and in this instance, Weebly had also updated a whole month’s worth of trendline so that the drops were even more painful to view. See the image and you’ll understand my disappointment.
The first response from customer services on 2nd October was this:
“The problem you’re describing has been identified as a bug and is being investigated by our engineering team. I don’t have an ETA for when they’ll have the issue fixed, but someone will follow up with you as soon as we have an update. I’m very sorry you’ve run into this problem, and thanks for your patience while our team works to get this resolved.” 02/10/19
When I chased for further feedback, I then got back this:
“We have recently changed the way that we track analytics on our sites. Your previous traffic stats were not inaccurate, it just used a different counting methodology focusing on the number of times your site has been served / rendered, rather than the number of actual users that viewed your site. The newer metrics are more reflective of actual usage and a better point of comparison. The new Insights utilizes front-end tracking where a website visitor’s browser pings Weebly servers to report usage. This is the same methodology used by Google Analytics, and is designed to handle granular calculations. While this methodology has certain limitations as tracking can be disabled by an ad blocker, it is much closer to numbers rendered by Google Analytics, and is much less susceptible to over-counting.” 11/10/19
So, the first response from Ron was nonsense, and the second, from Jayme, depressing.
Why depressing, well if success is a structure, it has just come crashing down. The results hardly justify the investment, and it is probably time to give up and do something more productive with my time.
To make matters worse, this message arrived on 7th October -
Hi Adrian,
Your domain adrianbaldwin.net will automatically renew in 2 weeks! There's nothing more you need to do.
Thanks,
The Weebly Team
The timing positively comedic bearing in mind the exchanges going on at the time.
I am not best-pleased. The renewal might as well go ahead though because otherwise my site just vanishes. However, after almost eight years of internet presence, the longer-term outlook for my site is now rather bleak.
You can help if you like what you read on my site, you can share posts/links with your friends, add comments to articles, follow me on Twitter, retweet the stuff you like, go mad with your emoticon library etc.
Recovering something from the rubble of one’s dreams, brings me on to an article that I read recently. I thought it was heart-warming enough to be worth sharing with you too.
Jonjo Heuerman and his mum, Donna, have been reuniting commemorative bricks (circa 1,000) from the old, demolished, West Ham United, Boleyn Ground stadium with their original owners/sponsors.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-49884207
Please have a read if you missed the BBC news piece.
So, I find myself reflecting that good can come from investment even years down the line. Something positive may still come from the demolition of my visitor stats. Like West Ham, maybe a new stadium is needed. Or perhaps I’ll spend more time working on better promoting what is on the site already, rather than writing new content (that won’t get read if I don’t promote adrianbaldwin.net properly).
Blog Home
Blog Library
Home
Related posts
https://www.adrianbaldwin.net/blog/my-net-popularity-takes-a-dive-well-sort-of
https://www.adrianbaldwin.net/blog/dreaming-of-a-million
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