Website Grader

Website Grader

At last year's Business of Software Conference, Dharmesh Shah suggested using his free Website Grader to get feedback on a website. The results are pretty interesting.

First of all, HopSafari scored in the top 12% of all websites they have graded. I can do better!

There was a minor glitch with Website grader. It couldn't find our blog or the RSS feeds for those blogs. I'm not sure if that is my fault or an issue with Website grader.

Some issues with Hop Safari:

• Missing image ALT text
• no del.icio.us bookmarks
• no twitter account associated with the domain
• no google buzz account
• no conversion form (a form for collecting email addresses)
• missing metadata

Things I've fixed so far:

• added metadata
• started another twitter account
• Changed the wording of the page title to have page descriptions before the page name (from Mr. Shah's BoS presentation)

Traffic

Over the weekend I welcomed 4 website visitors on Saturday, none on Sunday. Not great, but Hop Safari is only a few days old.

Events

I volunteered at (512) Brewing Company's second anniversary party this weekend. I took the opportunity to put a proof copy of Crafting Beer with (512) Brewing Company on their T-shirt table with some QR codes for Hop Safari and the book on Amazon. I suspect the event accounted for the 4 website visitors on Saturday.

I didn't work at the t-shirt table, but the few folks I talked to really liked the book. One person wanted to buy the proof copy on the spot, but I declined (until my delivery arrives, it is sadly the only copy I have). I wish the book delivery had arrived on time!

I was hoping that the event would generate tons of hits to HopSafari, but that didn't seem to be the case. Would I have sold some copies if I had some to sell? Probably. Having something for them to take home (a bookmark, bizcard, etc.) might have helped too.

I took some video for the event. Be sure to check it out on the Hop Safari beer blog.