Systemsthinking for every day use – a tale of web site traffic

I read in several places that systems thinkers tend to keep their work to themselves, and that stories work best to get more people to do it.

So, here is a story with a diagram of effects – want more traffic? .

Context: Last week, Marc Evers and I were working on a quote for a community website, based on a request for proposal we got. We made the diagram to clarify our interpretations about the clients ‘business’ – a not for profit foundation supporting a community of practice.

I’m involved in a number of websites, e.g. to support my business, conferences and as of recently wyrd web – a budding company to support more of that. The diagram helped me understand this client, and some of my other contexts involving a community and its’ website(s) – e.g. systems administrators don’t always see why uptime and responsiveness provides business value to a community of practice (which if done well supports a thriving eco-system).

We decided to send the diagram to the client, and then I posted it. The diagram itself is isomorphic with part of its message: quality content drives traffic, which in turn drives quality content. The post attracted a nice comment, which helps me to write more about this topic :) .

We’ll see in the coming weeks whether this diagram helped the clients’ contact person in sharing our understanding of an effective website’s value with the not-for profit’s board.


One Response to “Systemsthinking for every day use – a tale of web site traffic”

  1. me.andering » Blog Archive » Iterative and Incremental rebranding Says:

    [...] conferences and new developments. There must be a system to all this, most likely similar to a tale of website traffic. And we’d like a new name and logo, so the brand fits better with our aspirations and [...]