Good news! The stats are out and visits to the relaunched Christ’s Hospital Association site are up a MASSIVE 350% on the months prior to the addition of all that extra content and RSSification.
So the secret formula (note I’m sharing this, so really I guess it’s more of a Creative Commons secret!) for upping a site’s hit rate massively seems to be:
- Launch site, get faithful following who use the site even though there’s not much in the way of new content
- Do a quick usability audit, then re-design the site ever-so-slightly to make it easier to use
- Make use of new technology – especially successful if few other sites like yours do!
- Design and maintain a good, solid database
- Add (and keep adding!) interesting (and new) content
Actually, there should be a point 6: the most important thing, if you’re collaborating on work, is to make sure everyone knows what they’re doing, and when. We did, and not only was this an extremely succesful joint project, it was a helluva lot of fun, too!