Transcript Measuring Web Site Success

Measuring Web Site
Success
Jim Feck, Union College
Rachel Reuben, SUNY New Paltz
Ned Stankus, Hamilton College
On the Agenda
• How to set measurable goals for your site
• Tools/methods to measure your site’s
success
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Log file analysis
Focus Groups
Surveys
Usability studies
• Best practices for using those tools
• What to do with the “data” once you have it
Guiding Principles
• Your numbers are wrong
– Trends are important
– Consistency is key to everything
• Set specific (and realistic) goals
– Need to accommodate both the technology and
the end user
• Use quantitative data to back up
qualitative data and vice-versa
• Look for trends in resources accessed
Analytics: Log File Analysis
• How it works
– Definitions
• Tools available
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WebTrends
Urchin
ClickTracks
Analog
“Hosted” Solution (Embedded JavaScript code)
• “Myths”
• Best practices
• Success/failure stories/gotchas
Analytics: “Other”
• Mass e-mail effectiveness
• Search engines
• Third-party and legacy systems
– Virtual Advisor
– ChatU
– Webcast
• Homegrown apps
– News
– E-Newsletter
• Error tracking
– E-Mail Notifications
Focus Groups
• What are they?
• When to use focus groups?
• How?
– Target audiences
– Open discussion
• Outcomes
• Focus groups yield qualitative
(subjective) data
Usability Testing
• What is it?
• When to use usability testing?
• How?
– Target audiences
– Open discussion
• Outcomes
• Usability testing yields both
qualitative AND quantitative data
Surveys
• What are they?
– Types
• When to use surveys?
– Each type
• How?
– Target audiences
– Tools
• Outcomes
• Surveys can yield both qualitative AND
quantitative data (depending on questions)
Summary
• Focus groups
– Broad strokes
– Subjective
– Easy to perform
• Usability testing
– More granular
– More defined
• Surveys
Metrics We Can’t Live Without
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Page/site popularity - comparing date ranges
Click paths (to and from)
Internal search terms
Referrals/referral search terms
Browser (user agent) tracking
Dynamic page query data
Downloads for non-html files
Entrance/Exit pages
Unique/Repeat visitors (more reliable with cookies)
E-mail clickthrough
Admissions Surveys
Time on site
Error reports
Promoting yourself
and your office
• Summarize findings regularly to key
administrators
– Analytics of all types educate you and
everybody else
– Keeps the Web on the radar screen
– In the long run, this education helps
build support for the work you do every
day.
Reading List
Web Usability
• Don’t Make Me Think! (Steve Krug)
• Designing Web Usability (Jakob Nielsen)
Log File Analysis/Visitor Tracking
• Web Metrics (Jim Sterne)
Other:
• Call to Action: Secret Formulas to Improve
Online Results (Bryan and Jeffery
Eisenberg)
Questions?
[email protected]
[email protected]
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