CIL Notes: New Tools for Metrics and Measures
Staff members are probably your website’s biggest users.
–Edward Iglesias
I remain convinced that there are more useful ways of examining our data. We collect large numbers of stats – both those required for state reporting and those for our own internal measures – but each individual statistic seems to exist as an island unto itself. I’ve been wondering if there’s a new way to combine this data in a way that might prove more fruitful, and subsequently use it for further improvement. It’s not like I’m a Bill James or a Nate Silver, so learning to crunch these numbers is always an uphill battle. But I think it – along with some of the usability studies explored in this presentation – could help us out quite a bit.
We tried to do some heatmapping/click analysis last year, and had to abandon the project because we couldn’t find software that worked with our website. Most heatmapping sites use an imagemap-type overlay, plotting heavy clicks based on their position on the grid. Our site’s main navigation bar uses a lot of collapsing menus,which makes these locations anything but fixed. Without that kind of context, useful data may not be obtainable using this method.
Luckly, there are alternate measures, as pointed out by this session’s presenters. Debbie Herman and Edward Iglesias, of Central Connecticut State University; and Alka Bhatnagar of the New Jersey State Library highlighted a number of potential tools. Google Analytics got a lot of deserved props, and I’m realizing that I’m only scratching the surface of how it can be used. But it also looks like we can do some one-on-one studies, perhaps by rigging up some simple eye-tracking setups. The software – Silverback for Mac, mainly – looks like it’ll come in handy. And at $50, it’s cheap cheap.
But for this stuff to work, we’ll need to come up with the right questions. What on our website is intuitive to us as librarians that might be causing the public to pull their hair out.
Notes: You know where to find them.
New Tools for Metrics and Measures: Assessing Usability on a Budget
Debbie Herman and Edward Iglesias, Central CT State University
Alka Bhatnagar, New Jersey State Library
EI: Usability as a recurring theme through all sessions
LITA publication on usability a bit old
“If we don’t learn it here, we’re on our own.”
Not to be confused with UX – UX represents the perception left after the interaction. This is based on a series of transactions with people, space, services, materials.
Usability is focused on how things work.
Eye-tracking
Mouse-tracking
Heat Maps
(See chart in printed slides)
Eye-tracking has come a long way. Possible to build soemthing for about $300 (safety glasses w/cameras attached – one pointed at the eyes, one pointed out)- only problem is you have to write your own software.
OpenEyes software – can work with webcam
Technique creates a heatmap of what gets looked at most
Clicktracking – using mouse to determine
Third-party programs – giving them a lot of data
Other bits of software:
- Silverback (Mac) – $50
- Webinaria (Windows) – free
- Morae (Win) – 1120 for educators
- Camstudio – Open source
Can use screencasting software to caputre sessions
Using Silverback – school implemented MetaLib and used this to start testing
Very little documentation, but is very intuitive
Coming up with set behaviors to test for is key – what is intuitive to us, that may not be to our users?
Analytics – Google Analytics
Applying filters (filter out internal IPs)
Observations:: Find articles pages are heavily trafficked, while other pages are underused
Subject guides get little use. More point of need placement is necessary (sound familiar?)
Second tier index pages aren’t used
Stats on users: few use 800×600 resolution or worse
Feng-gui.com
delicious.com/debbie.herman/cil2009
AB: New Tools for Metrics & Measures
Maximize value, OBE, ROI, findability
evaluate engagement – key 2.0 metric
Tools: Google, WebTrends
websites used in case study: goodmorningresearch.com, njki.org
test-and-learn process
Use referring sites to identify collaboration partners
Benchmarking features – compare to similar sites
webanalyticsassociation.org
Q: which do you prefer, WebTrends or Google Analytics
A: Google. More features, easier to manipulate data