Impact Analysis For Web Sites

1
Impact Analysis For Web Sites
http//www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/conference
s/museums-web-2006/
Acceptable Use Policy Recording/broadcasting of
this talk, taking photographs, discussing the
content using email, instant messaging, Blogs,
SMS, etc. is permitted providing distractions to
others is minimised.

• Brian Kelly
• UKOLN
• University of Bath
• Bath

Email B.Kelly_at_ukoln.ac.uk
museums-web-kelly-2006-06 tag used in del.icio.us
UKOLN is supported by
This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonComme
rcial-ShareAlike 2.0 licence (but note caveat)
2
Contents

• Usage Statistics
• Strengths and weaknesses
• Impact Analysis
• What is it?
• Impact Analysis tools and techniques
• Web 2.0 and Impact Analysis
• Using Web 2.0 tools for impact analysis
• Web 2.0 is impact
• Sector Statistics
• What is it?
• Would it be useful?

3
Usage Statistics
Usage Statistics

• Exploit Interactive example
• EU-funded e-journal funded from 1999-2000
• Steady growth in usage measured by Sitemeter
  usage logs

Issues Is popularity of Web site based on "wrong
hits" and growth reflects growth in Internet
usage? How can we aggregate usage data in a
meaningful way?
4
Usage Statistics
Usage Statistics

• Usage statistics
• Can provide useful and valuable data
• but can also be flawed
• Implications
• Collect and use as they can be useful for
  formative statistics e.g. has a new marketing
  campaign worked what keywords do users use to
  find our Web site
• But also
• Be honest about limitations and don't over-hype
  statistics
• Use as a part of a portfolio of metrics

5
Impact Analysis
Impact Analysis

• Usage statistics
• Data on who is using Web site and how they're
  using it e.g. how many visitors are there?
• Impact analysis
• Attempting to measure the impact of the Web site
  or the contents of the Web site e.g. how has the
  Web site visit affected the visitors
• Challenges
• More difficult to measure than simpler 'visits'
• Requires thought as to aims of Web site
• Requires
• Objective and subjective metrics e.g. 'possible'
  indicators of impact
• Automated and manual measurements

6
Types Of Metrics
Impact Analysis

• Automated
• Usage statistics
• Link analysis
• Search analysis
• Manual
• Focus groups, surveys, etc.
• Hybrid
• Blogs, RSS feeds, asocial bookmarks, etc.

Let's use a case study for the Institutional Web
Management Workshop (IWMW) 2006 Web site an
annual 3 day event for University Web managers
7
Link Popularity

• Why link popularity?
• A link to my Web site is an indication that A We
  b author felt strongly about the resource
• Links help drive traffic (and so can boost usage
  statistics)
• Links enhance Google rating (and so can boost
  usage statistics)

Note that you can receive a monthly email report,
which can provide information on trends
It may be desirable to remove links from your own
Web site, otherwise growth may just reflect
growth in your site
Many site analysis tools now provide RSS feeds.
This can help Web managers in their monitoring
activities
8
Search Analysis
Impact Analysis

• Why search engine analysis?
• Search engines help drive traffic (and so boost
  usage statistics)

9
Talking To Users

• Impact analysis can be carried out by talking to
  / listening to the user community
• Focus groups
• Visitor books
• Evaluation forms
• Anecdotes
• Media watch
• Such techniques are well-known but how can
  technologies be used to support such activities?

Impact Analysis Manual Techniques
10
Using Blogs
Impact Analysis

• Blogs can make it easier to gather quotes other
  impact measures

http//j4.livejournal.com/2006/06/19/
11
Being Open
http//www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops
/webmaster-2006/publicity/
Impact Analysis

• The impact of ideas can be maximising by allowing
  the ideas to be used freely
• Open source software
• Open standards
• Creative Commons licence for content
• CC licences for IWMW 2006 resources allows
• Info about event to be used by others
• Blog articles, news, etc. to be syndicated

12
Providing Mashups
Impact Analysis

• You can maximise the impact of your Web site by
  allowing others to make use of your content e.g.
• Syndication
• News feeds
• Third party applications
• Note CC licence for event details permits such
  reuse

http//upcoming.org/event/69469/
13
Building A Community
http//www.frappr.com/iwmw2006

• Building a community for your Web site can
• Maximise impact by allowing interested parties to
  discuss their shared interests
• Provide you with feedback ideas
• Allow you to provide targetted information

Web 2.0 services such as Frappr, Blogger,
MySpace, etc. allow Web communities to be easily
set up (and may be particularly valuable to the
'Net Generation')
14
Sharing Resources
http//del.icio.us/lisbk/iwmw2006-parallel-kelly-p
hipps

• Social bookmarking tools like del.icio.us
• Provide an indication of impact (others have felt
  Web page worth bookmarking
• Support community building (finding others with
  similar interests)

15
Maximising Impact Web 2.0

• We have seen how Web 2.0 technologies (Blogs, RSS
  feeds, syndication technologies, third party
  services, etc) can
• Maximise impact by providing additional access
  mechanisms for users
• Minimise resource effort needed by making use of
  3rd party services
• Be used to measure the impact of our Web services

Impact Analysis and Web 2.0
16
The Bigger Picture
Bigger Picture

• Usage analysis and impact analysis aren't
  self-contained, but form part of a bigger picture

Usage analysis

• Who's accessing Web site?
• How are they finding site?
• What's popular?

These areas are complementary and should be
addressed as part of a strategy for ensuring user
needs are being satisfied. The strategy should
be hybrid, covering software and processes, real
world interaction, etc.
17
Sector Statistics
Bigger Picture

• Another aspect of the 'bigger picture' is
  statistics for the sector
• What are the characteristics of the sector?
• What legitimate assumptions can we make?
• What are the benefits to be gained by sector
  statistics?

UKOLN has worked with Nedstats who have provided
sector statistics based on 22 higher educational
institutions who were willing to host their
(invisible) counter. Summary based on gt 25
million page views and gt 4 million visitors See
lthttp//www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops
/webmaster-2006/talks/sidhu/gt
18
Bigger Picture

• Visitors Accepting Cookies

External Accept 94.64 Decline 5.36
Internal Accept 97.90 Decline 2.10
Overall Accept 95.93 Decline 4.07
2006 Average Accept 96.8 Decline 3.2
Cookies needed to monitor user trails
Taken from lthttp//www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/event
s/workshops/webmaster-2006/talks/sidhu/gt
19
Bigger Picture

• How do people find my site?

Overall 56.29 20.93 28.66
Three basic ways Direct Entry External
Referrer Search Engines
External 39.98 21.62 38.38
Taken from lthttp//www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/event
s/workshops/webmaster-2006/talks/sidhu/gt
20
Visitors from search engines Number of visitors
Percentage of visitors from search engines
Number of visitors per day
University
General
21
Conclusions

• To conclude
• Usage statistics should form a part of an impact
  analysis strategy
• A more comprehensive impact analysis strategy is
  needed
• This should be part of a user-satisfaction
  strategy
• Web 2.0 technologies can help
• Embedding Web 2.0 culture (openness, trust, etc.)
  can help the impact of Web sites which aim to
  maximise engagement with its user community
• "Impact Analysis For Web Sites", QA Focus
  briefing document no. 99, provides further advice
  see lthttp//www.ukoln.ac.uk/qa-focus/documents/
  briefings/briefing-99/gt
• Would sector statistics be useful for the museum
  sector?