Website Log

10/20/2022
  • (First of all, just want to say it's been a great experience working with Souvenir Program team.) When donors successfully make a payment in PayPal, there is a link for them to return to band website. The number of clicking that link is 14 during the campaign. Plus all other numbers collected during the campaign, the online application seems to work fine. I still need to work with the subcommittee to see if we can extend online application process next year.
  • what's been viral
    - Since school started, each post on Facebook grew audience from 200+/post to 500+/post; while website also has consistent audience of 500 individuals in the past 2 months. We seem to have a healthy cross-platform parity on delivering messages to our target audience.
    - In the same period, website traffic overall grew from 300 views/wk to 700 views/wk in average, SCBR spikes up to 1000+ 
    - Top 2 contents are SCBR video and homecoming marching down the hill
    - Short videos attract more audience than photos
    ​- SUG normally can reach 200+ reads on Facebook
  • Board member email addresses
  • Last but not least, I would like to call for actions to each of you on protecting our loved one's online presence. I start posting more and more photos and videos, including weekly hero image update on Facebook and website, and fun stuff from each band trip. I ask myself to be super conscious about the safety of our students when selecting photos. But if you see anything that concerns you, please don't hesitate to contact me immutably. I can quickly take it down before improving future selection criteria.
8/26/2022
  • Since school opens, average daily website visitor is 50, the booster meeting day 8/25 spikes up to 170. I am trying to identify the right amount of engagement when there is a band event occurs. Will continue to monitor for 2, 3 days.
  • I am guessing the long dwell time on the website is due to the videos on the home page. So I go ahead and put 2 more videos for the past events. Let's see how the dwell time changes.

8/25/2022 - webmaster update for Boosters Meeting
  • Board member email addresses - Kevin starts saving money for the band before evening officially becoming a Treasury. Kevin found Google for Nonprofits services, which includes free email addresses in organization domain name. Link here. Based on Kevin's findings after talking to Carrie, we have all the info needed, which includes tech soup account, EIN, physical address, and online contact. It seems very promising however if this does not work out for some reason, we will immediately start using [email protected], [email protected] etc.
  • Messaging Impact - between band camp and after first week of school, there are 297 unique users hitting the website. Comparing to Facebook *Reach* (not page visitors) of 440 during the same period, website and Facebook reach similar impact level in terms of messaging reach. FYI, FB page visitor averages around 60/month.
  • Dwell time on message - there is no stats around how long Facebook users staring at a certain post in streams of other messages but website user spent in average 1.5 min on website. You cannot imagine grabbing a Facebook user's attention for 1.5 min unless it's a video streaming. Thoughts on traffic purposes - Facebook drives excitement and attention impulses, while website drives quality communication.
  • Facebook/Instagram demography - 7% Facebook visitors has age <24 while 40% Instagram visitors has age <24. Facebook serves parents/guardians while Instagram serves students.

​8/5/2022 - updated home page and Facebook page cover photo for school opening
** 2021-22 is done here / above is 2022-23 **
6/24/2022 - band camp flyer on home page
6/23/2022 - John found out the website is down, reported, and Carrie helped Weebly renewal, website recovered in 18:45
5/24/2022 - Band Boosters meeting highlights
  • Domain security issue fixed!!!!! Shout out to Pia.
  • April and May are both busy months, so it's a somewhat MoM comparable in order to see the impact of rich content. Here are the comparison results:
  • Website daily average user grew 49%. At least 1/3 of the visitors come back on a weekly basis.
  • Visitors spent 124% more time on the website from 65s to 1m26s. Most time spent on is the NCBA band trip page - 3m40s, likely due to the video playback of the performance.
  • Top 3 most popular pages:
    1. Home page, duh~
    2. Calendar
    3. Media Library (Woohoo!)
  • Facebook Page April vs May
    • Number of visits grew 61% mostly due to Todd's live streaming.
    • Each event post reaches 200+ friends and 17 likes in average
    • Cover page weekly update has 35 likes in average
  • Talk about the value of studio quality casual photo ops for band families.
(I lost track between 4/28 - 5/24. It's too busy on adding contents to the site.)
4/28/2022
  • Updated home page photo in late evening for the Friday weekly headline photo update
  • Revise wordings in the NCBA Large Ensemble Festival event page and Band Trip Checklist page to better coordinate traffic among website, Instagram, and Facebook.

4/24/2022
  • Added Google Analytics code in Settings -> SEO. Will see what happens.

4/23/2022
  • Instagram post on weekly website headline photo update. Expected to see traffic spike on 4/23. Check back on 4/24.

4/22/2022
  • Home page and News page updated for Music in the Park event and the 4/30 band trip to the NCBA Concert and Jazz Festival
  • 4/21 traffic ups slightly (I am guessing) due to band boosters meeting.

4/19/2022
  • Site traffic update
    - 8.6 daily unique visitors in average in the past quarter
    - 16.28 daily unique visitors in average (peak at 29, 2nd highest in 2021 academic year) during spring trip update period. I am *guessing* the website reaches about half of the band parents.
    - March has a lot of traffic. I don't know the reason but it's important to know what drives traffic to the site, e.g. county 
4/18/2022
  • Received Weebly registration account (using 831bandboosters Gmail) info from Pia on Apr 18, 2022
  • Updated Santa Cruz Band Review page by re-organize information, added 2021 band review schedule/result info, and added Story of the Header Photo section
  • Updated Band Review Checklist page (previously Trip Tips) under Guardians section
  • Updated Contact Us page
4/16/2022
  • Created Boosters Meeting Minutes page
4/15/2022
  • Updated home page header image 
  • Fix a detail of the logo to make the word BAND on top of the cardinal bird image
  • Experiment video header background using Golden Valley High Band Review video
4/12/2022
  • Instagram feed schsbandtrip photos and videos removed. Total of 6664 impression made and 47/3150 follower/non-follower reach. Non-follower reach are 90% coming from Reels posts. For future event, Reel posting should prevent containing kids close-up details.
    Most popular photo is the taped door.
    Most popular video is the band marching down on Disney Main St
    Most popular short videos (Reel) is playing freesbie during pee break on the way home, followed by the band marching
4/11/2022
  • ​Added spring trip photo albums, and sent email to all boosters
4/4/2022
  • Added Music in the Park flyer on the home page
  • Added Music in the Park detail page (pending review, not public yet)
  • Remove Yahoo Group info in the Guardians page bottom and replace with temporary solution of asking parents email Band Booster to be included in email communication.
  • Created a template page with slide show header
  • Added Cardinal logo to the header
  • Adding right column in Guardians page for Call for Action links
4/3/2022
  • Added spring trip info in News section on the home page.

Asks & Ideas (add yours here)

  1. (Noreen) help to tweak logo for better placement.
  2. (John) try out donorbox.org for donation, ticket sales, fee collection, etc.​
  3. (Julia) certain degrees of budget transparency to facilitate fundraising
  4. (Pia) Need an Ensembles page to show music programs
  5. (john) freshman parents on-boarding process,
  6. (john) discount code to buy band booster t-shirt to raise money
  7. (john) - monthly highlight of one student/instrument/scene of music room
  8. (John) fundraise via photo op in Santa Cruz Review. E.g. Lincoln High, private studio Ted Torres
  9. (Pia) blog page for band news
  10. (John) a film for 2022
    ** Below are achieved in 2021-22 **
  11. (John) Band media library
  12. (Krista) Meeting minutes available on the web
  13. (John) Google Group self-managed,
  14. (john) call for action in parents page
  15. (John) weekly home page photo update with story of the photo,
  16. (john) news update, band review video in header,
  17. (Pia) FIX THE SSL DOMAIN ISSUE!
  18. (Pia) Migrate from Weebly to WordPress - Verdict: NOT doing due to Wordpress storage limit.

Experiments