THUNDER BAY – Once again it is time to share a huge Thank You, Meegwetch, Merci, Kiitos, Grazie, and Tika hoki with all of our readers. Thanks to your continued readership and support, we are continuing to grow and evolve. Are you noticing that NetNewsledger is loading a little faster?
“We need speed, speed is what we need… demon speed, greasy fast speed…” those were the words that ‘Mickey’ the trainer for ‘Rocky Balboa’ used in Rocky II to plan the training for the fighter to win the championship.
On the Internet, speed is critical. If a website is slow, people leave that site. If you notice that NetNewsledger is just a little faster than it was before. Several changes that Brett, our Chief Technology Officer has been implementing are now complete, and the goal of speeding up the site was just one of them.
Brett shares that the site is now rated in the top two percentile of sites on the Internet after some carefully planned changes. That speed will really help make your visit to NetNewsledger.com a lot more enjoyable.
Speed equals fun! Our analysis of readership has told us that a much faster site is important to our readers, especially across Northern Ontario.
You might have also notice that the colours and the design have changed over the past weeks.
We are implementing a new graphic look to the site. One of our guides in terms of colour is the Medicine Wheel. First Nations communities across Ontario and North America interpret the Medicine Wheel in slightly unique ways. The wheel is often used as a tool for healing and for teaching life skills. Some of the most common interpretations of the colours, include the seasons and directions:
- Yellow represents the East or Spring
- Red represents the South or Summer
- Dark blue or black represents the West or Autumn
- White represents the North or Winter
Other interpretations can also include the elements – earth, water, sky and fire.
Some interpret that the colours, Yellow, Red, Black and White are representative of all the peoples of the world.
We believe this colour design fits to the direction of NetNewsledger.com, and of Northern Ontario too.
In the past year, 379,649 individual readers have made NetNewsledger.com one of the places that they stop to visit and gather their news and information. Of interest, 116,346 of our readers are on Shaw Communications, 75,677 are on Tbaytel, and 14,363 are on Keewaytinook Okiakanak as their Internet service providers.
NetNewsledger.com is gaining an increasing readership in the North. The KO numbers are especially significant, as unlike in Thunder Bay where there are thousands of people with individual ISP numbers, in many northern communities there are as few as three ISPs for the community. Other larger northern communities may have more, but the reach is very significant.
You, our readers view an average of 3.14 pages per visit.
While some websites will share the number of hits as an indication of the popularity of the site, that is a statistic that is not a real indication of popularity. Hits are counted for each connection as well as for each part of the webpage that the visitor goes on, as well it can include ‘bots’ or ‘spiders’ that crawl the Internet. One of the most common ‘bots’ is from Google, as the search engine giant gathers the information it needs to help you use the search engine.
During May and June for example there were 9,504,121 hits on NetNewsledger.com. There certainly wasn’t nine and a half million visitors.
As the site improves in speed, and as we continue to add new writers, photographers and features, we look forward to even greater engagement in our region.
Have you have wondered why information from your community in Northern Ontario is not included in NetNewsledger.com’s news? Have you thought of becoming your community’s NNL-Correspondent? Contact us at newsroom@netnewsledger.com for information.
As always, nothing that we do would work without you, our readers.
Thank You, Meegwetch, Merci, Kiitos, Grazie, and Tika hoki!
James Murray