Wimbledon At The Other End Of The Telescope

So Tim lost today, and my fears about a last minute Timbo final special homepage request can lie dormant for another year.

The BBC gets blamed for a lot of things, so I'm sure some people will cling to the suspicion that the fact the homepage immediately whipped out a Blue Peter-style "Here's one we prepared earlier" picture promo covering the news demonstrates we jinxed him.

For my part I was just happy to see another external link - to www.wimbledon.org - as part of a five-pronged promo. I'm so pleased to see the homepage showcasing the fact that the BBC site can be a part of the internet, and not just hover on the sidelines, nervous of a world wide web that features adverts, and has sites that can't be controlled, and might not comply with our editorial guidelines.

I must take the time to look at how much traffic we are driving to these sites from the homepage - to see how useful the BBC audience is finding them.

Eyedropper coined a phrase about our homepage promos, that we forget what it is like when 'you are looking through the other end of the telescope'. For us the fourth and fifth links on a promo will generate click-throughs, but nothing like the links higher up in the promo, or the prominent genre links on the homepage like News or Sport. Internally though, the effect for one of our smaller sites of being put on a homepage promo is like being slashdotted - a fraction of the click-throughs on the homepage on a given day can represent a significant growth in traffic. That is one of the reasons for ensuring that the homepage covers more the BBC's regional and niche content to supplement the main promotional message.

I doubt that we are making much of a spike in the web traffic of the official Wimbledon or Glastonbury sites, but I'd love to see a day when appearing on the BBC homepage becomes the equivalent of being slashdotted for smaller sites outside of the BBC.