Comments on: Web Traffic Analytics and User Experience

By: arouben

arouben — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Good article! There are definitely benefits in doing web analytics. We recently did a study of wikipedia users and used a freely available database dump. Data logs gave us an ability to look at behavior of thousands of users, something not easily done with user testing (time consuming). I think that for the sites that have an existing user pool, web analytics is a very useful method. Google also uses data logs to evaluate changes to the site and finds the method quite effective (Google UX video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6459171443654125383)

By: zimmatore

zimmatore — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Very good article. I’ve successfully used WTA in conjunction with multivariate platform testing to demonstrate how planned user experience changes affected site conversion (two-different page designs, current vs. new delivered randomly). The “why” came from a priori hypotheses about design and the effects on user behavior. WTA and multivariate testing were used to prove the hypotheses correct. The only time I didn’t know “why” was if the hypotheses didn’t pan out in testing. WTA is not going to provide that for you. That’s what you bring to the table.

By: Joe Sokohl

Joe Sokohl — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

WTA can tell us WHAT, but not WHY. WTA is important–and your article nicely describes its importance as well as some practical approaches. Yet these statistics don’t tell us why users did something, only that they did it. Observations of real users in real settings helps us understand why.

By: Fran Diamond

Fran Diamond — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I totally agree that WTA is about the what – I am huge advocate for the WHY as well. When I had a job that was 90% “what” and 10% “why” in terms of user analysis, I was desperate for more “why.”

Understanding the actual user behavior on websites provides a good balance to user testing — and can help frame what questions to ask, and understand what areas need work.

By: Peter Fraterdeus

Peter Fraterdeus — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Fran
Thanks for this article. In fact both of this week’s features in B&A eLetter are exactly what I’ve been looking for just lately.
Of course, I’m always reminded of Mark Twain’s famous quip that “there are lies, there are damned lies and then there are statistics”
I would far rather ask users about their experience than try to figure them out at arm’s length by reading the entrails of a chicken

Nonetheless, the ability to define a baseline and get a sense of movement from that point forward is obviously useful.

Still I wonder if slicing and dicing all this log data isn’t vastly overrated. It’s really looking in a rear-view mirror, when well-written user surveys and testing will get right to the heart of the matter.

With regards

Peter Fraterdeus
semiotx.com

By: dharana

dharana — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Really interesting article. Thank you, Fran

By: Eric Diamond

Eric Diamond — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

To Peter’s comment, I think slicing and dicing is one tool of many. It is vastly overrated if it is your only tool, but as a starting point, it can be very cost effective and it can yield surprising insights when carefully reviewed. I think the problem is that so few actually analyze their data. they look at hits or sessions or whatever and then it’s “have a nice day.”

It’s a classic problem of intelligence (of the CIA variety) in that when you have an overabundance of data it becomes too overwhelming to delve into it and actually learn anything. This is especially true for non-technical person or marketing department.

And I completely agree with Peter’s views on the subject of chicken entrails. I can think of far better uses for a chicken. Especially one breaded in Panko bread crumbs and oven-fried. Yum.

Eric

By: Sven Körber

Sven Körber — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I really enjoyed reading this article. Web-tracking can really be a valuable tool in the toolset of UX professionals.

Just one big caveat: If you’re dealing with http server logs, it is easy to overlook the influence of search engine spiders crawling the respective site.

You really need to keep your user agent exclusion list up to speed, otherwise you’ll inflate the overall quantity of accesses. What’s even more problematic: spidering patterns can be irregular, going only to the nth level of the site and excluding pages a spider cannot reach.

Bottomline: Before computing anything from log files, clean up the raw data.

By: Kyle Pero

Kyle Pero — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

This article was great because it drives home the point that analysis goes hand in hand with usability/IA.

In my opinion, there is no reason in putting any effort in making things more usable or better organized if your not going to also put effort into tracking to make sure your changes are actually working. Too many times I see people making “enhancements” to their site without ever really finding out if the changes they made are making things better or worse for the user and/or business.

I think that people assume right away that if they change something it’s always for the better. Tracking is really the only way to know for sure.

By: Christian Watson

Christian Watson — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Nice article. One point I would make is that time spent on the site or on a page is not a useful metric and should be put in the discard pile along with hits.

There is nothing useful you can tell from this metric as there are too many unknowns surrounding it (e.g are your pages interesting to read or is the right content just hard to find; did the visitor go off and make a cup of coffee while on your site, etc).

Furthermore, to put another nail in the coffin of ‘stickiness’, I would suggest that it is most likely actually a better thing if visitors spend *less* time on your site, indicating that they have completed their task successfully and moved on to the next thing they want to do.

Gerry McGovern says some interesting things about this point–you could say that quality of user experience may be inversely proportional to time spent on site.