Integrating web analytics into information architecture and user-centered design

Integrating web analytics into information architecture and user-centered design 2008 IA Summit Hallie Wilfert [email_address]

CSI MiaMi User Experience Capturing Statistics to Influence

Or the boring title…. Integrating web analytics into information architecture and user-centered design 2008 IA Summit Hallie Wilfert [email_address]

Overview
What is web analytics?
Why should you care?
What it can and can’t tell you about your web site
How to implement a web analytics program
How to quickly analyze web statistics data

Web Analytics Association’s official definition:
Web Analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of Internet data for the purposes of understanding and optimizing Web usage.

AKA Web stats, web statistics, the gigantic report that comes every month that no one looks at
Quantitative data collected about web site activity
Interpreted through a web analytics software

What I use
Urchin
Webtrends
Analog
Clicktracks
ACSI / Foresee Survey

Why should you care?
It’s USER RESEARCH!
IAs are good investigators

Why you should care
Statistics are captured 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
Can locate areas that need further investigation
Sets the stage for additional user centered design

Where it fits in

What it does not do
WHAT people do but not WHY they do it
Some things must be planned for in advance
Tracking where people go
Tracking within flash or other dynamic apps

Implement a web analytics program
Quick wins, start small
Show impact
Presentation of data matters
Summarize the key issues and tell people what to pay attention to
Analytics software only does part of the job
A person needs to interpret the data and add the context

Truth and Heresy
You do not need to be a statistician to implement an analytics program
You do need to be a good communicator and a good interpreter
Do not expect or promise accuracy
Trends are more important than exact numbers

So, your first assignment…
You are about to start working on a web site
Your goal is to improve the site’s user experience
You ask, “Do you have web site statistics I can look at?”
They say, “Yes” and hand over the stats

Step 1: Check out the web site
Mission & Goals
Audience
Key pages for the user
Key pages for the business
Technical assessment
URL structure

Step 2: Check the accuracy of the stats report
Has the report been set up correctly?
Are searchbots, spiders, and other non-human visitors being excluded?
Is the top visitor to the site “crawl−66−249−65−83.googlebot.com_Mozilla/5.0 (compatible;Googlebot/2.1; http://www.google.com/bot.html) ”?
Are internal visitors being excluded?
Make sure to exclude employees, contractors, and others who work on the site.

Step 3: Read through the report quickly
Get a high-level overview of what is being reported on and the overall trends.
What are the pages that appear frequently?
Are these key pages or pages that you did not expect to see?
What are people searching for on the site?

Step 4: Look at a number of months’ reports side by side.
Get a sense of the trends.
Is there more traffic during the week than the weekend
Are certain pages popular only during a particular part of the year?
Are the same pages appearing over and over again?
Are there some pages that do really well and then fall off the radar?

Step 5: Connect with the communications team
Are there promotions and campaigns that you should be aware of that might impact traffic?
What are the hot issues that might get people to your site organically?

Step 6: Prioritize what you pay attention to
Visits and page views
Average pages viewed
Site navigation preferences
Entry and exit pages
Most popular content
Traffic to key pages
Keywords that referred people to the site
Keywords used on internal search engine
Referrers
Conversion

Pay attention to
Visits and page views
Overall trends
Individual pages
Documents

Pay attention to
Are visitors going where you want them too?
Are people getting stuck

Pay attention to
Entry and Exit pages
Are visitors leaving at expected or unexpected places?

Entry & Exit pages

Pay attention to
Keywords
Internal Search Engine
External Search Engine

Pay attention to
Referrers
From Search Engines
From External Sites

Step 6: Prioritize what you pay attention to
Conversion
How people get through a process or set of pages

Conversion

Anything else?
Intranet
Look at the top users and go to them for feedback

Step 7: Analytics applied to User Centered Design
Are the goals of the site being met?
Are people getting to the pages that they need?
Are people getting to the pages that the business wants them to get to?
How have changes to the site design impacted the site’s traffic?

What can you do with it?
Analyze patterns in Web site usage
Benchmark Web performance and set goals
Locate problems
Predict opportunities for growth
Measure the effectiveness of Web site
Help direct Web site strategy

Step 8: Present the information clearly
Answer questions
Provide next steps
Make connections between the numbers and the real world
Make it interesting

Good resources
Web Analytics Demystified : http://www.webanalyticsdemystified.com/
Occam’s Razor : http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/
Web Analytics: An Hour a Day by Avinash Kaushik
Search Analytics : http:// www.rosenfeldmedia.com/books/searchanalytics /
Web Analytics Association’s standard definitions : http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/attachments/committees/5/WAA-Standards-Analytics-Definitions-Volume-I-20070816.pdf

Wrapping up
Questions?

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Integrating web analytics into information architecture and user-centered design

by Hallie Wilfert on Apr 14, 2008

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Integrating web analytics into information architecture and user-centered design — Presentation Transcript