Improving Usability of Library Websites with Web Analytics

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Improving Usability of Library Websites with Web
Analytics
Information Experience Laboratory University of
Missouri - Columbia
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Library Websites Challenges Opportunities

• Beyond traditional boundaries
• Investment in digital collections e.g.,
  electronic journals and databases
• Development of information access technology to
  cater to the patrons needs
• Justification of investments
• Making wise collection development decisions
• Support with usage patterns and data analysis

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Common Problems with Library Websites

• difficult to distinguish between thephysical and
  organizational divisions of Libraries
• redundancy of links and resources
• search tools and site organization
• lack of provision of user self-sufficiency
• unfamiliar terminology, acronyms
• remote login issues
• subscription to journals
• authentication required to access journals
• difficult navigation

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Usability of Library Websites

• Operational definition by ISO
• effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction with
  which a specified set of users can achieve a
  specified set of tasks in a particular
  environment
• Website usability studies
• Helps librarians to maximize their use of
  collected data
• Complement other forms of evaluation
• User focused
• Identification of website problem areas

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Elements of Usability Evaluation of Library
Websites

• Determine the purpose of the evaluation
• Identify specific problem area
• Create user profiles
• Determine the best time for evaluation
• Select the methods of evaluation Task Analysis,
  Talk-aloud Protocol, Focus Group, Expert Review
• Prepare usability evaluation protocols
• Put in use latest usability evaluation tools
  (Morae, UserVue)
• Analyze data
• Report findings highlight clips, written report
  and recommendations

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Examples of Usability Studies

• MU Office of Research Illumination study
• Task How useful is the research magazine
  website - Illumination to the target audiences?
• IE Lab conducted one-on-one user interviews and a
  focus group interview to identify users needs
  for research information and their interaction
  with Illumination .

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Examples

• MU College of Education
• Task Content and task oriented evaluation of the
  CoE website.
• IE Lab applied moderated and non-moderated group
  data collection methodology, enabling better
  efficiency in Lab space use and short turn-around
  time for project completion.

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Examples

• MU Admissions
• Website study
• (2006 CASE award winner)
• Task Usability evaluation of the new student
  admissions website.
• IE Lab provided the development team with remote,
  real-time observation of how prospective
  students and their parents use the website.

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The Origins of Web Analytics

• Transaction Log Analysis and Page Tagging
• Evaluation of system performance
• Developed to be known as Web Analytics
• Enhanced assessment of web services

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Transaction Log Analysis Advantages

• Patterns of use and trends over time
• Predict and prepare for times of peak demand
• Project future system needs and capacities
• Develop services to support user actions
• Study error rates, user actions to recover from
  errors, the number of simultaneous users and
  session lengths

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Transaction Log Analysis Disadvantages

• Extracting and interpreting data is time
  consuming
• Interpreting data can be problematic
• No way to connect data to actual user needs
• Enormous sizes of log files
• Additional storage requirements or offline
  storage

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Web Analytics as a Remedy

• User-friendly off-the-shelf product
• Hassle free handling of data logs
• Enhances measurement of web metrics
• Reports can be configured as per goals, segments
  and priorities
• Unwanted information can be eliminated

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Issues Affecting Implementation

• build or buy time and feature
• data ownership storage
• support for ongoing data collection
• end user issues (continuity privacy)
• use of mixed methods
• Source Developing a Web Analytics Strategy for
  the National Science Digital Library

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Google Analytics

• Free enterprise-class solution
• Summarizes data and statistics in plain language
• Advanced visualizations
• Deep metrics
• Goal based reports
• http//www.google.com/analytics

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Want to experience a usability study using
advanced usability tools ??

• MOBIUS Website Usability Study
• Today!!
• Three Sessions Available
• 1100 to 1145
• 315 to 400
• 415 500
• Sign up now
• (Sign up sheet also available at the MU booth)

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Resources

• Developing a Web Analytics Strategy for the
  National Science Digital Library
  http//www.dlib.org/dlib/october04/coleman/10colem
  an.html
• Letnikova, G. (2003). Usability testing of
  academic library web sites A selective annotated
  bibliography. Internet Reference Service
  Quarterly, Vol. 8(4), 53-68.
• The Journal of Web Librarianship.
  http//www.lib.jmu.edu/org/jwl/ (forthcoming
  special issue on web usablity)

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Questions?