2001 Evaluation
2000 Evaluation
1999 Evaluation

2001 - UW Extension's Food and Nutrition Web Site: Use Has Expanded

SITUATION

A work group* of county- and state-based UW CES educators is responsible for maintaining and expanding the UW Extension Food and Nutrition Web site at <http://west.uwyo.edu/food>. The following are key points related to the group's activities and the site's use in 2000:

• Activity data: From October 2000 - September 2001, Web server software collected and compiled monthly data related to the site's activity.

• Site expansion and improvements: Examples include the addition of Food Security/Hunger as a topic, the addition of Fad Diet Critiques to the Nutrition Misinformation topic area, and the separation of Commodity/Industry Trade Groups from within the Food Preparation topic area.

 
• Promotion: The group periodically promotes site changes and features to UW FCS educators and makes multiple copies of the site's Rolodex cards available to all UW FCS educators for distribution in their counties.

 

Popular pages

Most visitors enter the site via the main page. The other most popular entry pages are Food Composition/Nutrient Analysis; various pages within Food and Nutrition Publications (with "High Altitude Adjusters" being particularly popular); and Newsletters. Nutrition Misinformation/Fad Diet Critiques has also been gaining in popularity.

Use and Trends

Two sets of data illustrate use of the Web site and indicate trends in 2000-01:

Total Number of Visitors

Table 1 and Figure 1 show the number of visitors to the Web site each month from October 1, 2000, through September 30, 2001. An average of 1,289 people visited the site each month. This compares to an average of over 1000 per month during 2000, and 450 per month during 1999.

Table 1 Number of Visitors to the Site 

Month
October	1436
November	1121
December	1005
January	1086
February	1298
March	1482
April	1267
May	1225
June	1405
July	1500
August	1450
September	1188

 

Total Number of Pages Viewed

Once visitors reach the site, they can view numerous pages, such as Diet and Disease, Food Composition/Nutrient Analysis, Food Publications, Nutrition Misinformation/Fad Diet Critiques and more.

Table 2 and Figure 2 show that the total number of pages viewed during the eight-month period was 24,100 or an average of 2,008 pages per month. Although the data indicate a steep drop in the number of pages accessed in January, the reasons for that drop are not clear.

Table 2 Number of Pages Viewed

Month
October	2282
November	1752
December	1733
January	304
February	2373
March	2087
April	1868
May	2347
June	2319
July	2586
August	1450
September	1905

Summary

The number of visitors to UW Extension's Food and Nutrition Web site appears to have stabilized at a level considerably higher than when activity data started being collected in 1999. From mid-1999 through FY 2001, the average number of visitors has increased nearly three-fold, from approximately 450 to almost 1300 per month.

*UW Food and Nutrition Extension Web-site Work Group: Randy Anderson, Bonnie Ellenwood, Vicki Hayman (joined mid-2001), Phyllis Lewis (joined mid-2001), Chris Pasley, Suzy Pelican (chair), Virginia Romero-Caron, and Rhonda Shipp (until mid-2001).
 
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