Oklahoma State University Viticulture and Enology Website and Blog Impact Assessment

In June 2007, a newly designed Viticulture and Enology website was launched at Oklahoma State University. The website contains eleven main pages. Pages were created using Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 and based on the okstate.edu Division of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources page template.  The Le Vigneron quarterly published newsletter, edited by Dr. Eric Stafne, is available for download as a .pdf file from the website. The newsletter is promoted through the website, the okstate grape blog, and e-mail listserv of current and past attendees of the Grape Management Short Course. The grape blog, The Glog, authored by Dr. Stafne, can be accessed from the index page. The Glog is promoted via the website, newsletter and e-mail listserv of current and past attendees of the Grape Management Short Course. In August 2010, free Google Analytics code was imbedded into the index page to track usage and collect data from those accessing it. Data collected includes:  site visits, pages viewed per visit, bounce rate, average time on site, new visits, traffic sources, visits from countries/territories, and browser and connection speed profile. In addition, information about those accessing The Glog is collected via the hosting entity, Wordpress, using an integrated statistics system. Data collected includes: the number of visitors, visitor origin, most popular blog posts, and search engine terms sending visitors to the blog. Google Alerts, a free email alert monitoring system to track your “brand”, is used to report weekly what people are writing about the website. Visits to the index page number more than 1250 unique views, over 2000 page views from 35 countries/territories, and a 62% bounce rate. The average time spent on the index page is just over two minutes per visit.  Traffic source breakdown averages 26% from google, 18% direct, 25% from the okstate.edu page, and 6% from Oklahomawines.org (an Oklahoma grape grower website).  Data from the grape blog consists of greater than 6,000 total views, about 15 per day, with the most referred visits driven by traffic from the grapes.okstate.edu webpages. Changes to websites, blogs and branding tools can be made from tracking program feedback. Data from free tracking programs can be a useful tool for projecting contact numbers for annual university cooperative extension reporting. A user’s poll will be a future means of determining successes and areas needing improvement to meet the demands of e-consumers.