DATA: DIGGING DEEPER & DISPLAYING

JEFF WISNIEWSKI

WEB SERVICES LIBRARIAN

UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH

WHAT YOU INTERPRET IS WHAT U GET

THE BIG PICTURE IS TOO BIG

THE BIG PICTURE IS TOO BIG

Segment your site by:

Type of content aka your goals (more on this later)

Users’ goals

WAYS THAT YOUR QUALITATIVE DATA IS WRONG(ISH)

ARE YOU FILTERING IRRELEVANT TRAFFIC?

Staff IPs

BEWARE THE OUTLIER

Average Time on Page:

This is the average amount of time that all users spent on the specific page within the date range.

Simple, but remember this information can be easily skewed by the extreme boundaries of the results.

For example, say you had 10 people come to a Web page and this is how long they stayed on the page:

Person Time on page

1 2:23

2 2:12

3 1:39

4 40:44

5 1:49

6 2:01

7 1:33

8 2:09

9 1:17

10 1:56

BEWARE THE OUTLIER

If you add up the total amount of time you get 57:43 and then divide that 10 and you get an average time on page of about

6 minutes and 3 seconds.

THE BOUNCE RATE MYTH

We link to a LOT of third party sites from our websites:

Catalogs

Discovery tools

Overdrive

Databases

LibGuides

Book review sites

THE BOUNCE RATE MYTH

A user who visits your homepage and then visits one of these places has

WHEN THE COOKIE CRUMBLES*New vs Returning users relies on cookies.

• Up to 66% of users user multiple devices

• App. 30% of users deleted cookies deleted in a one month period

*I stole this title from the comscore article of the same name because I liked it

http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Blog/When_the_Cookie_Crumbles

TIPS

Dig deeper

Provide context

Whenever possible visually display results

IT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A

PAGE-centric view

And a

USER-centric view

http://boxesandarrows.com/ux-design-planning-not-one-man-show/

FORBES MAGAZINE SAYS:

“If You Think A Web Analytics Tool Is Enough, Think Again”

(and if Forbes says it it MUST be true)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidwilliams/2012/04/16/if-you-think-a-web-analytics-tool-is-enough-think-again/

SIGH

Quantative is (relatively) easy

Qualitative is hard (er)

YOUR SITE

Needs to have SMART goals

Specific

Measurable

Attainable

Relevant

Timely

THESE GOALS SHOULD COME FROM TWO PLACES

Business objectives

• Yours or your parent organization’s mission and goals

User goals and objectives

• But how do I know what users want?

SOURCES OF INSIGHT

Global: Pew, Forrester, OCLC, etc.

Local: Your users

ASK THEM

USER INTERVIEWS AND PERSONAS

A persona is a fictional person who represents a major user group for your site.

Personas help you identify major user groups of your Web site.

You select the characteristics that are most representative of those groups and turn them into a persona.

USER INTERVIEWS AND PERSONAS

Interview representatives of you key demographics

A. Can you take me through your typical online routine? You open up your web browser and where do you go first?

B. E. You’ve been given an assignment to write a term paper on climate change with at least 4 sources cited throughout the paper.

C. i. What is the first thing you do?

USER INTERVIEWS AND PERSONAS

• How often do you go to the library website? • When do you go to the library website? What do you do when

you’re there? (Take participant to site)• What immediately draws your attention?• What features do you like/dislike?• Did you find the Website easy to use?

• Why or why not? • If not, what would make the site easier to use?

• What information did you expect to find but did not?

What links are the most important and should appear on the main page?

USER INTERVIEWS AND PERSONAS

Use the answers to develop personas that represent your users

Use the personas to develop a list of critical tasks for each demographic

STACEYfreshman

the source of the information can come from anywhere and is really irrelevant; she just needs to know where to look

uses often commercial search engines like Yahoo and Google to locate information

she doesn’t distinguish between the online catalog and the library web site; for her, the web site is just the way to get to the catalog with some additional information mixed in

Unaware of library tools and resources

needs help with the research process and is overly-confident about her own research skills, which may not be as strong as she thinks

spends a lot of time at the library to study for midterms and finals; wants to be able to check easily what the library hours are

she wants to easily connect to wi-fi and uses self-print for all her assigned readings

does not rely heavily on the library’s print journal collections; commonly uses e-journal collections

uses primarily books on reserve and rarely checks out a book or two from Hillman collection; expects Hillman library to have all the textbooks required by instructors and is surprised if they are not in the collection or are not placed on reserve for students

uses chat or calls the front desk to get help from library staff with locating a reference

uses her smart phone to find the call number of a book on reserve, see if a book is checked out and when is due back, or look up the syllabus, the course number, or the name of the instructor

USE PERSONAS TO IDENTIFY TOP TASKS BY AUDIENCE

What specific things does Stacey want to do on our site?

Set up GOALS and FUNNELS around these tasks

GOALS

Goal : the page a visitor reaches once they have completed a desired action

Funnel : The (optimized) steps along the way to the goal

THE GOAL

Sstep 1

Sstep 2

Sstep 3

THE FUNNEL

GOALS Name the goal something intuitive. In this example it might be “Class Registration”

Choose whether or you want the goal to be active (on) now

Most library scenario goals will probably fall under the “URL Destination” type

GOALSHere add the URL of the thank you page

*TIP

Exact match has to be EXACTLY the same as the URL….even leading or trailing spaces will cause it to fail

GOALS

add the URL(s) of the page(s) along the path a user would take to get from the homepage all the way through to the thank you page

MAYBE DIFFERENT METRICS FOR DIFFERENT CONTENT

Set up different profiles for:

Engagement content (blogs, guides, reviews)

Funnel content (get me to…databases, ejournals, catalog, etc)

Informational content (hours, policies)

MAYBE DIFFERENT METRICS FOR DIFFERENT CONTENT

Time on page:

Engagement content (blogs, guides, reviews): hopefully high

Funnel content (get me to…databases, ejournals, catalog, etc): hopefully very low

Informational content (hours, policies): hopefully low

COMMUNICATING THE RESULTS

KEY VISUALIZATIONS

TRAFFIC> SEARCH> ORGANIC

TRAFFIC> SEARCH> ORGANIC

CONTENT>LANDING PAGES &EXIT PAGES

CONTENT>LANDING PAGES &EXIT PAGES VIA VISITOR FLOW

CONTENT>TOP PAGES

CONTENT>TOP PAGES (IN-PAGE ANALYTICS)

QUESTIONS?

THANK YOU!