To drive traffic to our sites and increase the number of page views, this is a list of suggestions that we at the College Media Network believe will help our partner's improve the quality and effectiveness of their respective sites.
1) Access to Google Analytics - Google analytics allows each school to track the page views on their own sites over a period of time. By providing a valid g-mail to us we can make sure that each paper can monitor their own page views and site traffic.
2) Relevant Contact Information - pages Make sure all contact information on "contact us" page is up to date so papers can continue to have a strong connection with consumers.
3) Hyperlinks to Previous PDF issues - Instead of just pasting all the widgets onto a separate page that archives all past issues that we embed the code for each issue into a separate article then use a header that clearly states the issue number and volume of the archived issue. This will drive pages views because when users come to the site and click on the widgets the Ram online is not credited for a page view. By posting these archived editions into an actual article and then forcing the uses to click on these links the ram will thus be credited with a page view every time a person tries to access one of the past editions of the ram. It will also help clean up the look of the archived page because it will not be just a long list of unnamed past issues that take a great amount of time to load but rather a list of links that are more compacted and organized in a more effective and efficient way.
4) Make Pages - for each sport Create a separate page for each sports team.. This can simply be fixed by adding in each sport as a sub page under sports and then tagging all relative articles to that particular sport under not only the main sports headline but also the specific sports sub page. This better organizes the articles and makes it easier for users to find the articles that they would like to read about.
5) Maximum age of article increased from 7 to 90 days Over the summers change maximum age of article from 7 to 90 days to ensure that the site does not have a lack of content and give of an empty feel during a time where sites will not be updated with new stories as much.
6) Contact info for advertising opportunities - Make sure you have separate contact information for potential advertisers. This will help keep better organization and make it easier for potential advertisers to get in contact with the papers.
7) Generic button images for articles without images For articles without images we suggest that our partners create generic images that can be inserted with the articles or reuse relevant images that were used in past articles. By doing this it makes sure that no article will be without an image which improves the aesthetics of our sites as well as allows each article to be more versatile and shown in more sections of our site which we believe would increase the viewership of those articles.
8) Design of Sports Page - When clicking the sports icon on the home page there is a link to one main story and then is a list of links for each individual sport the school sponsors that redirect the users to other sites. This is not effective because it directs traffic away from the site. This space can be better used to showcase more top stories for Fordham athletics written by the writers of the paper that will therefore retain the visitors of the website and keep them going to other sites such as the athletics page or the conference page to find out the information they need.
9) Archive Content - in a a more cohesive way There are many articles stored within archives, but there is no contextual way to reach these articles. Simply creating more pages and tagging the articles in the pages/sub pages it gives the users more options and choices increasing the effectiveness and use of the site.
10) Multimedia & Image Gallery Pages - archiving videos and photographs - http://www.thelantern.com/multimedia
11) Keep in close contact with school administration Work with University and Alumni relations to get alumni users signed up and incoming students and parents of students.
