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

What is web analytics? 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.

What is web analytics? 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

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 Site navigation preferences 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?

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

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

Integrating web analytics into information architecture and user-centered design

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