Ask HN: How do I get to that next level of traffic? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How do I get to that next level of traffic?

#21

Post by jwesley » Thu, Dec 04, 2008, 11:59 PM UTC

ConradHex wrote: post #3

It sounds like the problem isn't "getting enough traffic", it's getting people to stay, or to come back. Are you focusing on that?

You have it right on the money. If people keep coming back because they love to use the site, you should experience continuous growth. They will also be likely to tell other people about it, giving you viral potential.

If you cannot get users to stick, no amount of front page Reddits and newspaper mentions will save you. Even though organic traffic is consistent, even that levels off after a while, is hard to obtain, and is dependent on having a massive number of pages with unique content.

Re: Ask HN: How do I get to that next level of traffic?

#22

Post by brentb » Fri, Dec 05, 2008, 12:15 AM UTC

papa wrote: post #11

In some ways, building the product is the easy part. Getting traction is the really dicey problem. Check out some of the SEO/SEM sites like seomoz. SEO is very important. Link-building is also important. Look at getting some reciprocal links or at focusing on a specific niche within your site and really trying to develop a core audience around a few musicians/genres in order to get that "critical mass" of interest. C…

papa, this is off-topic, but your site's "ajax_updates_iframe" architecture needs some serious attention. As it stands now, each time it's updated (every few seconds) it creates a new entry in the browser's history (at least Firefox 3's... haven't tested others).

This totally mangles a user's history... after just a few minutes, every entry in my history was fanpop, which I was not at all happy about. I'm sure this upsets others too and there are ways around it (iframe within an iframe, for example, which doesn't affect history). Just FYI.

Re: Ask HN: How do I get to that next level of traffic?

#23

Post by apgwoz » Fri, Dec 05, 2008, 12:20 AM UTC

rokhayakebe wrote: post #19

handhold wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cherrypeel.com

Here is the solution: Organic Traffic. I am not technical so excuse it if I sound naive. Ajax is beautiful, but if you have a content site and want traffic, you are going to hurt your search engine results, and that counts because sooner or later that should be your main traffic source. You need to turn those categories into more pages meaning whenever someone plays a song or creates a list, that becomes a page with…

I don't think you want a page for every song played, but you might want to have a detail page about every song in your database, which links to profiles that have played it recently. That's basically the same thing, but not as spammy.

What about band bios, or something similar to increase the amount of unique content?

Re: Ask HN: How do I get to that next level of traffic?

#24

Post by apgwoz » Fri, Dec 05, 2008, 12:28 AM UTC

handhold wrote: post #5

ConradHex wrote: post #3

It sounds like the problem isn't "getting enough traffic", it's getting people to stay, or to come back. Are you focusing on that?

We have started to focus on that, trying to get people more involved and giving them reasons to come back to the site. It is a weakness of ours at this point but something that is solvable.

Survey your users.

Re: Ask HN: How do I get to that next level of traffic?

#25

Post by kylec » Fri, Dec 05, 2008, 12:31 AM UTC

scotth wrote: post #18

handhold wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's http://cherrypeel.com . I was trying to start a general discussion and not spam HN.

I'm cherrypeel.com's developer. thought i should put in a warning that the site plays music immediately.

And you wonder why you're losing traffic. As someone who browses the internet, if my computer starts playing music (in this case, loudly) without my consent, I go on safari to hunt and kill the infringing tab. I strongly recommend against this 'feature'. Display something that says "play now!" and even load the song if you want, but don't actually play it until I consent. Please.

Re: Ask HN: How do I get to that next level of traffic?

#26

Post by TobiasCassell » Fri, Dec 05, 2008, 12:37 AM UTC

I joined and roamed around a bit, its really beautiful. I very much admire the minimalist style. But I think it is possible the very thing that makes the site such a joy is what makes it hard to gain traction, and that is the lack of content/information outside of the actual music. Users need to be getting a constant stream of info to hold their attention. If a site doesn't do this it sends a subliminal message to the user "nothing new here, I'm never coming back"- they may not even be aware of this and they may have nothing but great things to say about your site but they might not return either. I feel you may need more emotional branding of the artists to hold everyones attention, and more intimate connection to the music industry. In a perfect world you would not have to clutter up your site with any of the following suggestions but maybe there is a way to incorporate some new elements without sacrificing the gorgeousness of it all.

1)Video content never fails to resonate with users, it would be great for artists to embed their existing online video content somewhere on your site. 2) Do any of the artists have their own groups on Ning? Can you create a loop somehow? 3)Do the artists have flickr groups? Are they on tour, can you integrate their Dopplr profiles if they have them? 4)Geographical info mashup? Where is the music coming from? Where do the artists live? Can you figure out how to provide information regarding gigs? 5)Take the blog more seriously. Maybe don't hide it? Blog more often, mention music related links and stuff that may not directly concern the site. Maybe you should think of the blog as the marketing? (feedback loop again)

I could continue but I'm not sure if I'm on the right track here. I look at everything with a marketing/social engineering prospective, I don't write code. Let me know HackerNewsCommunity and I'll give it some more thought.

Re: Ask HN: How do I get to that next level of traffic?

#27

Post by netcan » Fri, Dec 05, 2008, 12:51 AM UTC

This is a post about tracking the increase of active blog readers. I think it can be taken as a broad parallel to active users.

http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2007/11/blog-metrics-six-reco...

By measuring well you may find some insight that'll help.

The jist of the examples is that readers (apply to users) are acquired one at a time. Digg, stumble & such are not going to give you a massive spike in users. Nothing probably will. Its about momentum.

Anyway, maybe you will find some answers in analytics.

Re: Ask HN: How do I get to that next level of traffic?

#28

Post by rrhyne » Fri, Dec 05, 2008, 1:18 AM UTC

scotth wrote: post #18

handhold wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's http://cherrypeel.com . I was trying to start a general discussion and not spam HN.

I'm cherrypeel.com's developer. thought i should put in a warning that the site plays music immediately.

Telling that the developer comes by to warn us about the music playing automatically. Think he has advised against it before?

Re: Ask HN: How do I get to that next level of traffic?

#29

Post by petercooper » Fri, Dec 05, 2008, 1:37 AM UTC

our growth rate of active users isn't tremendously high

You have two options. Work on more traffic or, and this is FAR easier, work on your conversion rate. Get more of those fewer visitors to sign up and you get the same result.

Re: Ask HN: How do I get to that next level of traffic?

#30

Post by mattmaroon » Fri, Dec 05, 2008, 2:28 AM UTC

What does your Facebook app do? Does it have a strong viral component? Those almost never are able to direct much traffic back to your site, but they can often do what your site does, possibly better, and spread faster.