Users Driving Web Site Changes

Karen Coombs, Head of Web Services, University of Houston Libraries
Steve McCann, Digital Projects Librarian, University of Montana

We can discover a lot about our users and how they use our Web sites if we take time to observe their behavior online. Coombs offers an overview of the tools and systems used to capture information, including log files from Web servers, proxy servers, OPAC, and statistics from Interlibrary Loan system and OpenURL resolvers. She talks about how to create a picture of what library’s Web-based resources are being used and where, as well as the path followed to discover them. McCann describes how "user personas" can effectively help with Web site design. User personas function as a way to capture a user’s point of view while filtering out a site designer’s own personal prejudices. McCann walks you through the process of building user personas based on analysis of Web site traffic logs and through a usability study at his university. Take away lots of ideas for creating more effective Web sites.

Blog links:

Schwagbag

My Notes:

Entry points for library's site - what are the pages that users come into the site on?

A lot of activity on library site doesn't actually happen on the library site itself; it involves going offsite to other sites and databases. It's hard to trace what users do and where they go. If you track exit points you can see where they're making those hops off and where they're going - database, Google, whatever - and find out where they get frustrated enough to leave the site and search for information elsewhere. If a page with no external links is an exit point there is something frustrating about that page.

How do people link into the site? The ohmepage or deeper into the tree structure? (if so, they get more hits and more use if links are deep)

Referer reports can be used to track paths through the site.

Think about what the students are doing and why. In one case, students were going to computer labs instead of the reference desk in their library. Turns out the comptuers in the Reference area had no productivity software like Word. They saw an overall increase in the number of questions in reference once productivity software was installed.

OpenURL data - requesta & clickthroughs by source - why don't people go on through the OpenURL window? - few clickthroughs.

Session path tracing - script that constructs xml files to trace path through site - how are people getting to particular pages? many commercial services just guess. This script says specifically what path. This generates a ton of data - only turn on for certain amount of time.


User Personas

Create one archetype to make all your design decisions. Then have secondary personas, then have a persona who you are not designing for. This will help you make decisions about structure and design, because you know exactly how your user behaves and what they are looking for.