At cirm.ca.gov, one can find the very
words of its directors as they wrestle with everything from grant
approvals to conflicts of interest. Scientists can be seen telling
the story of their accomplishments. Money can be followed, and
summaries of reviews of grant applications read, both those approved
and those that did not pass muster.
The web site of the California
Institute of Regenerative Medicine (the formal name of the agency) is the place where the stem cell program
really meets the public. News stories are important, but infrequent.
Day to day, however, thousands of interested persons seek out
information that the folks at CIRM HQ, just a long throw from the San
Francisco Giants ballpark, bring to cyberspace.
Each month, said Amy Adams, major domo
of the web site, 15,000 to 17,000 “unique viewers”
visit online. She told the California Stem Cell
Report in an email,
“We're up about 25 percent year over year in unique viewers to the site. A lot of that growth comes from search, and the rest is from traffic driven through our blog and Facebook.”
The numbers are not huge compared to
those chalked up by major media sites. But they are significant
given that there are only a few thousand people worldwide who are
deeply and regularly interested in stem cell research. Many more,
however, are stimulated to look into the subject from time to time,
either because of news stories, personal, disease-related concerns or simple interest in cutting edge science. Engaging those
readers, who can spread the CIRM story, and winning their approval is
critical for the agency as it faces the need to raise more millions
as it money runs out in the next few years.
CIRM has mounted much information online over
its short life. So much that good tools are needed to navigate the
site. Decisions about what should go on the home page are critical.
With the makeover, the agency now has a long-needed, home-page link to its
meetings , especially those of its governing board, which are the
single most important events at the agency.
The redesign is crisp and clean. The
new, white background makes it easier to read and is comfortable for
readers long conditioned to the black-on-white print of the books,
newspapers and magazines. The video image on the home page is larger,
which helps attract viewers. The site has long had a carload of
videos, some of which contain powerful and emotional stories from
patients.
Adams used CIRM staffers to test the
new features. She reported,
“I've had people inside CIRM (who have been beta testing this site) tell me that they are finding content they'd never seen before because the site is so much easier to navigate.”
Adams and the CIRM communications team
also have pulled together important information on each grant on a
single page, including progress reports. You can find a sample here on a $1 million grant to Stanford's Helen Blau.
Adams said,
“Now people can not only read about what our grantees are hoping to accomplish, they can read about what has actually been accomplished with our funding.”
Adams said another new feature is
downloadable spread sheets of information that can be manipulated by
readers offline. She said,
“Most places on the site where you see tables, you can now download those tables to Excel. You'll notice the small Excel icon at the lower left of the table. This feature has long been available for the searchable grants table. Now you'll see it on all the tables of review reports (see here for example http://www.cirm.ca.gov/application-reviews/10877) on the disease fact sheets (see here http://www.cirm.ca.gov/about-stem-cells/alzheimers-disease-fact-sheet) and other places throughout the site. This is part of an effort to make our funding records more publicly available.”
CIRM's search engine for its web site
still needs work. A search using the term “CIRM budget 2012-2013”
did not produce a budget document on the first two pages of the
search results. A search on the term “Proposition 71,” the ballot
initiative that created CIRM, did not provide a direct link to its
text on the first two pages of search results.
Also missing from the web site, as far
as I can tell, is a list of the persons who appointed the past and
present board members as well as the dates of the board members'
terms of office. The biographies on some of the 29 governing board
members come up short. In the case of Susan Bryant, her bio does not
mention that she is interim executive vice chancellor and provost at
UC Irvine. Links also could be added to board members statements of economic interest. A list of CIRM staff members (only slightly more than 50
persons) and their titles could be added.
As for CIRM's count of visitors, CIRM
uses Google Analytics tools. Adams said,
“A unique visitor is Google's definition (it's one of the metrics they provide). It's a visit from a unique IP (internet protocol) address. So, if you visit our site multiple times from one IP address during a day, you count as a single unique visitor. (Editor's note: It is possible to have more than one visitor from the same IP address.)
“We get ~23,000-25,000 visits per month, or ~16,000-18,000 unique visitors. Page views are on the order of 65,000 a month.”
Our take: The redesign of the web site
is a worthy effort and enhances CIRM's relationships with all those
who come looking for information. The agency is to be commended and
should continue its work to improve the site and its connections with
the public.
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