If you didn’t notice, I made a few changes on the site, and it was easy — I let the data do the changes based on site traffic.

This was based on a year of site traffic data through Google Analytics.

Removing the tag cloud

This is a conversation that I’ve had a few places.

I feel tag clouds are useless pieces of Web 2.0. Most executives think they make great demos. Users could care less.

Now I have the data behind the argument.

The highest tag from a page view perspective was requirements gathering, at 160 pages (39th highest request). After that it was usability (at 76). Silly Saturdays clocked in at 122.

Almost no traffic.

Tag cloud — gone.

Promoting content higher

A few posts, specifically  Seven Reasons Why Agile And Scrum Works For Web User Experience which got thousands of views, I promoted to a new area for Top Posts. I’ll rotate posts through that region, but going through the data a few posts got a significant amount of traffic.

If users want to read certain content, they can have it!

Removing links

The links on the right generated almost no traffic, so I removed a lot of them. I do think it’s good to have some resources for users, but they’re more often than not clicking on them within the body of an article, not in a sidebar.

Links, gone!