LCA Website: Six Month Status Report

It’s been close to six months since we launched the new and improved Lakeview Community Association web site. Since then we’ve slowly struggled to figure out the best ways to use the site to help Lakeview residents.  We tried a lot of different things — some worked well, others didn’t, but after 6 months and 45 posts I think we’re starting to figure things out.  You might be interested in what we’ve learned:

Site visits are growing slowly

 I don’t have exact numbers since I just changed the way we track this type of thing, but we are growing quite steadily month over month.  50 new visitors a month is a big deal for us compared to our old, out of date site.

One way to get more site visits is to get at the top of search engine rankings.  So when people search for “Lakeview Community” or “Regina Learn to Skate” our website is at the top of the list.  That’s starting to happen more and more.  For example, we are the number one result in the world for “Indoor Power Cycling.”   That’s pretty cool. 

Email inquiries are growing quickly

The number of email inquiries we receive is growing every week.  Many of you are using the contact us page to ask questions about programs, book the outdoor sign or let us know about what’s happening in the community.  That’s great to see since it’s exactly why we redesigned the site.   Please keep emailing! We try to respond quickly, often on the same day and for sure by the next day.

Subscribers are growing slowly (but we can fix that!)  

As you’ve likely noticed, this is not your traditional web site.  Our aim is to give our readers a place where they can stay on top of everything happening in the neighbourhood.  And we’ve designed the site to make it very easy for people to get updates.   

How many times have you been asked to “keep checking the website for updates”?  Frustrating, isn’t it?  Who has time to remember to check hockeyregina.ca for game changes and qcsoccer.ca for more game changes and regina.ca for planning changes?  

Not me.  I might remember once a month, if that.  That’s why we built a handy subscription feature into this site.

Just enter your email address to subscribe and you’ll get a single email update at 9PM each evening that the LCA site has more content.   It’s a regularl email too — you can forward it to your friends, talk about it, and even reply to the email and give us some feedback.  

So over the coming months we’re going to work hard at growing our subscriber base.  If our job is to spread the word, then our subscriber numbers is one of the best measures of whether we’re achieving this goal.

Our Current Subscribers ROCK!

Right now out subscriber base is pretty small — 27 people last time I checked — but those subscribers are what I like to call ‘sneezers.’  They’re the type of people who also have 150 friends on an email list and love to tell their friends about what’s going on.  So the word is spreading.

One of the best examples of this is our campaign to get outdoor ice shack supervisors this year.  Our website campaign spread across Lakeview very quickly and more people volunteered than we needed (we’re going to find other ways for them to help in the future!)   

So to our current subscribers — Thank You!  Please keep spreading the word.

If you’re reading this and you’re not a subscriber — why not?  It’s free and easy.  Just click here to subscribe now!

The word cloud image represents the posts over the past six months, created by Mark using wordle.net