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M. K. Mullenix, E. M. Forte, K. M. Bennett, 021 Assessment of a Beef Cattle Management Website for Extending the Reach of Extension Information in Alabama, Journal of Animal Science, Volume 94, Issue suppl_1, February 2016, Pages 10–11, https://doi.org/10.2527/ssasas2015-021
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Abstract
It is estimated that 70% of US farms and ranches now have access to the internet (NASS, 2015), and 40% are livestock producers that regularly use computers for business purposes. Informational websites and other web-based platforms are ways to help deliver research-based beef cattle management information to clientele. In August 2014, the Alabama Cooperative Extension Beef Systems program launched a beef cattle management website (www.alabamabeefsystems.com) for housing publications, decision tools, and current events related to a variety of management topics including forages, nutrition, health, reproduction, and economics. Following one-year of promotion and use in Extension programs, website metrics were assessed to determine overall use, areas of interest among users, and trends for enhancing website use by stakeholders. During the first year of use, there were 6,007 site visits, with an average visit duration of 6 min and 34 sec, and a median duration of 1 min and 10 sec. The number of visits to the website generally followed a linear trend from August 2014 to August 2015, with an increasing number of visitors across this time period. Within the website, the most visited pages included the main home page and breakout topics related to fencing, the Alabama commodity feed list, forages, and nutrition. The majority of website traffic was direct traffic to the website (48%), while 32% were referred through the main Alabama Extension page. The remaining site visits were primarily from search engines using the words ACES, beef, Alabama, feed, cattle, and commodities. Increased web traffic was observed on the day of extension programs where the site was discussed in detail. Publications and upcoming events listed on the website were also promoted through the use of social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter. Links to the Beef Systems website were incorporated into social media posts using shortened URLs which provided tracking metrics. When links were posted to these web outlets, the average number of publication views on the website increased (175 views following posts vs. 74 average views for similar resources). These results suggest that stacking the use of web-based tools may help increase the reach of online beef cattle management information. Short-term web-use metrics enable Extension professionals to gather baseline data for reporting information usefulness and identify areas for improvement when creating web-based resources.
