VijayWeb.com

Usability Analytics: The four most key factors measured in website usability testing include: learnability, effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction.  Though, it is not a perfect alternative for the traditional one-to-one usability testing methodologies, but very economical and fast when we already have web analytics data with us in form of reports example, Google Analytics Data.

Learnability:

Effectiveness:

Efficiency:

Satisfaction:

Google has joined Alexa and Compete.com today by introducing a FREE service on Website trends (http://trends.google.com/websites) for competitive benchmarking studies. Find now thru Google, how your website is trending over a period of time and compare with your competition. Not only that, but also we can break-down the trends by region/country and correlate the data with search keywords and the visits to other websites by your website visitors.

Trends are important because trend is everything for the businesses to monitor on a regular basis. In the above screen shot, we would know that it is normal to have a spike on the year-end as it is a holiday season and rest of the months the trends are consistent.

Not only that, it is also important as the market sizes for your products/services are increasing or new markets are created for your products, you would need to know how well you are growing or declaining against your closest competition. In the below graph, facebook in India growing big while myspace is still consistent which may not be a positive indicator for myspace.com considering the businesses want to capture the international market too.

Google       Website Trends also provide top 10 search keywords that drove traffic from the search engines and again a comparative trend with the competition.

Though marketers know which keywords drove traffic to their websites, they may not know how much traffic was sent to the competition for the same keywords. In this example, 30% people searching for bestbuy have also landed at walmart.com

Google says the data is collected from a variety of sources, such as aggregated Google search data, aggregated opt-in anonymous Google Analytics data, opt-in consumer panel data, and other third-party market research. Funny thing is Google itself opted out from this data so we can’t see how Google, Youtube, Orkut doing

Pls. note that we can get actual numbers to the graph by signing into Google.

Another Service from Google on the way for complete Market Research Data, luckily I got a beta login to try it out, here are the screen shots: http://www.google.com/adplanner

In addition to what is provided in Google Website Trends, here we also get Country Reach metric which I had also talked about a quicker solution to calculate country reach last year.  Ad Planner has ways to drill-down the sites by demographics.  This is a great tool to select sites to advertise on and even to know the demographics of our own site.

User Demographics and other metrics from Google Website Trends:

The user interfaces and user experiences would dramatically change as the Multi-touch Operating Systems start entering the market. I really anticipate a huge transition would happen at personal computers segment and so the peoples browsing behaviors.

iPhone is a clear success on the multi-touch. (I am not sure on the commercials though)

And, now HP has launched the first touchsmart PC (hopefully it will be used for multi-touch OS). Apple too has come up with the touch enable PC. http://h30440.www3.hp.com/campaigns/touchsmart/IQ500_NA/Model.html

The best part of the next generation user interfaces would hopingly overcome the usabiltiy obstacles that the industry is facing currently and even a novice user should be able to navigate thru Web without any assistance…it is so obvious the moment you touch the screen.

Most of the visual objects we use with 12X21 pixel arrow cursor may get obsolete…as now it is thru just finger which is little bigger than the cursor. The visual affordance of the links/buttons would get a big change, just try to touch a link or button and experience the interactivity The buttons, links, and all other input design objects would be very reactivie and interactive.

Horizontal scrolling would likely to get a boost in place of current vertical scrolling. We may not see the scrolling bars either.

Tag Cloud for VijayWeb.com

Tag Clouds became very popular in Web2.0, though tag clouds are started widely for secondary website navigation  mechanism…it is being also used for various other fields. I feel it is a great tool to visualize the Search Keywords in one small graph like above.

There are free tools popping up for us to leverage this technique for Search Analytics.  One can also use this tool to visualize the theme of the web-page content and accordingly use for Search Engine Optimization benefits.

Free Tag Cloud Tools for Search Analytics.

• http://www.wordle.net
• http://tagcrowd.com

There is also a free script available from IBM to download and run from our side.  I am posting the direct download URL for the file (you may have to register and login if the link doesn’t work for you) – Click here to download IBM Tag Clouds Software

URL means Uniform Resource Locator (URL) which specifies where an identified resource is available and the mechanism for retrieving it.

An URL structure generally includes a domain name, folders, files and extensions in it.  We are going to discuss the best practices in URL Structure for the benefit of SEO, Usability and Branding too.

A domain name has several levels to it.  In domain name “www.vijayweb.com ” -  “.com” is called as the Third Level or Top Level Domain, “vijayweb”is actual domain and it is also called as Second Level Domain, and finally “www” is just a sub-domain.  We use www as prefix or a subdomain more commonly as the interent has been branded in that way from the beginning. It is just a custom than a technical requirement.

Choosing a domain name was the most difficult part in the beginning of the DotCom story than it is now One had to really do a lot of research and brainstorming, even taking consultants assistance to really choose a right domain for new dotcom business.  The main factors that were used to rate “a domain name should be easy to remember, easy to recall, easy to pronounce, spell, write” are some of the main requirements to choose a domain. But, with Web2.0 they all have really not a big stand and any catchy word will work, for example, reddit.com, digg, del.icio.us, youtube, flickr etc.,    Earlier there was great option to depend on the domain name for branding the business or service, now with all the domain names are gone with cybersquatting, we are left with minimum options.  Now, we are left with chosing a catchy word and brand the domain name with the unique solutions we are offering.

Best Practice: Choose a Catchy Word, still keep in mind the basic rules (easy… that is usability).  Be particular about choosing a country specific TLDs (top level domain) if your target audience belong to specific countries.  Country specific TLDs are one of the factors that will win Search Engine Ranking Positions in your country specifc search engines while still play in the global search engines.  (I don’t really see it is important to choose a keyword rich domain  that doesn’t meet the above prequalifiers unless you are building the site specifically for the purpose of search engine rankings).

After Domain Name,  a url structure can have one or more levels  to it. And, this is where the most difficult and confusing part as there is a direct SEO benefit.  There is no one formula works for all when creating search engine friendly urls for SEO purposes as there are only 10 positions every other person want to rank in.

There are different SEO URL structures in practice:

1. Creating content theme by having all similar content into one folder or category.

2. Having all static and dynamic files originating from the root of the domain.

3. Use Keyword rich file name and folder name.

4. Not keeping more than 2 or 3 levels down in the url.

5. Having static pages with no query string parameters

6. Having underscores between the words

But, these are pretty old practices…with the social web in web2.0, SEO will also majorly depend on how users are liking the content and sharing on the web.

Best Practice: While keeping the above guidelines in mind, thinking about the user and how he behaves after he lands and what you want him/her to do on the site would give great inputs in how you can align this with the above SEO practices.  Providing seperate identification in the URL for important sections and features of the site would enable visitors to remember the urls and land directly to the pages. Provide short and easy to copy and share urls.

Opinion Cloud is a firefox plugin for YouTube.  It got a very interesting features which summarize the comments into positive and negative while showing the comments in a nice tag cloud.

This tool though gives the feedback on the video, it can be better used to infer the feedback on the product or service.

You can install Opinion Cloud plugin from firefox website:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/11283

I found it is interesting that SmashingMagazine.com has only 2.5K pages but get about 3 Million daily unique visitors per month.  The below I compared with couple of sites which mainly were built to drive traffic from Search Engines…And there are a ton of them coming everyday to make quick ad $ (I must confess I did test this

No. of Pages Indexed by Google:

Smashingmagazine.com – 2530 web pages
SM has hand picked topics and well written content. Having high userbase every topic is discussed in comments and linked from high quality sites, and social bookmarking sites which is a direct SEO benefit.

Hotklix.com (A Times Group Venture) – 370,000 Pages
A web scrapping site from Times Group, the site gets updated with small snippets of the content from other news sites, blogs as and when they are posted.

Kosmix.com (a $50 Million funded startup) – 225,000 Pages
This is also a web scrapping site but received a big media attention as it is a well funded startup and good PR Campaigns. They came up with a concept which is very similar to universal search results page, but organized various components/data elements coming directly from API’s thru algorithmically.

And, most of the pages from Kosmix, Hotklix and similar site are dropped from search engines as they identify the duplicate content patterns.  These sites may ultimately be banned from search engines which will obviously result to lesser traffic to a zero traffic.

It is always advisable to focus on “Content Quality, Uniqueness and Popularity in Social Web” to get the same sustainable results with much less effort.

The role of web analytics specialists has started with creating the reports, management dashboards and providing insights on the website performance, campaign performance, landing page performance etc., and closely monitor the trends. (We had never prepared the reports back in late 90’s rather used to look at raw logs and log analyzer reports Check: Web Analytics Evolution). Most of the web analytics specialists also work in tagging/implementing the tracking mechanism and managing vendor relationships.

I am attempting thru this blog post to see if “Web Analytics Practice should be taken to the next level in the organization by bringing it to SEO, SEM, Designers, Usability and eMarketers and make web analytics as a part of their jobs” and what web analytics specialist should get into.

Keeping that in mind, let’s keep the web analytics role into three modules as you see below: Implementation, Reporting and Analysis

Based on how Web Analytics roles are evolved over a period of time, web analytics specialists are not the ones who work on SEO, SEM, Email Marketing, Landing Page Development, Offer Generation, etc., But, most of the Web Analytics professional do know each of these functions. However, people who has started their career directly with Web Analytics is a different case.

Bringing Web Analytics to the larger community like Search Engine Marketers, Email Marketers, Designers and Usability Professionals would dramatically increase the level of understanding and acting on the data more quickly. Everyone who is involved in web business should understand what metrics to monitor, what kind of analysis can be done for his/her function at job.

For example, A/B Split Testing or Multivariate testing should also be done by Usability Professionals along with their regular Usability Testing Methodologies. A/B Testing and Multivariate Testing should be part of their tool box. Similarly, A/B Testing and Multivariate testing should be part of Campaign Manager’s and Designers tool box too…so that they can test the various campaigns and how they are performing at various levels. It is recommended that these tools are used by the respective function people than web analytics specialists who has the technical knowledge of the tool but have limited knowledge on the design, and usability principles. (Expecting that vendors will make their tool interfaces more usable and understandable by the regular users)

Similarly, SEO’s should monitor the Gateway Page traffic from Natural Search, and Pages that perform and don’t perform. Search Keyword Reports including Natural, Paid and Onsite search to find the new keyword opportunities to target the new or the same web page for newer rankings. SEO’s should also know classifying the keywords, content pages within a website for monitoring the performance and for newer opportunities.

Search Engine Marketers and Online Advertising people should know how to get the post-click, pre-click metrics & associated visitor behavior and how you can use some of the statistical methodologies available (statisticians help needs here than a just web analytics person – increasingly web analytics folks are turning to learn these methodologies) to better target in your next campaign.

Similarly, Email Marketing/List Management folks, Affiliate Marketing/ Co-branding, Server Webmasters and all have their own metrics to monitor, report, analyze and ACT!

Web Analytics people should take a larger role as evangelist in web analytics thru out the organization and ensure that all respective function people effectively use these tools for the benefit of business.

Expecting that the amount of time people spend on reporting will going to be reduced a lot over-time but analysis and business insights would take a lion’s share here.

Expecting Web Analytics role would soon be split into technical and anlaytical roles. It is no more just tagging the web page by including a generic javascript but more than that, person without good understanding of the technicalities may not get into a full-time web analytics implementation specialist role like before. This is going to be more an IT job than a business functional job. Similary, analytical roles would see a huge turn as the businesses started seeing the importance of optimizing their web functions. Analytical people are getting into learning more statistical tools and methodologies for optimization purposes.

Will Advertising Produce this kind of response?

88 Million Views
199K 5-Star Ratings
150K Comments

Not Just that…People started making Spoofs

TV Interviews:

Are we ending up reporting those 2 digit traffic nos. from the ad spending?
It is ime to think about “Stop Selling and Start Helping!”

Role Based Web Analytics Reports – Know which report you should be looking at!

Unless you are a one-man army, you may not require every report that can be generated in your web analytics tool set.  I have seen people looking at all kinds of reports all the time and miss the metrics exactly that require their attention.  I believe no one role/person is required to monitor more than one or two metrics over a period of time. And, I wonder why we should be ending up creating hundreds of those colorful slides every year…which only misses the focus on the things that should be taken care.

You could be a Web Developer, Server Administrator, Usability Professional, Web Content Manager, Search Engine Optimizer,  Search Engine Marketer (Paid),  eMail Marketer, Online Store Manager…there is something that you can use from web analytics to optimize for better.  All  you need to do is define the metrics on what you do, and be aware on how it is contributing to or from others metrics.

Creating Role Based Web Analytics Reports in different Levels would help in increasing the focus on those specific defined metrics and also you know exactly on what you would need to concentrate to improve the metrics that you are responsible to.

Let me put this in a pyramid format for better understanding, I am calling it as “Web Metrics Pyramid” -

Let’s try to apply this Web Metrics Pyramid to one of the web business function or a role… with Search Engine Optimization.

Search Engine Optimization Metrics -  It is very important for the businesses and search engine optimizers to define their success metrics.  Like with any function, the reporting frame-work should be split to the Role…which we are calling as “Role based Web Analytics Reports”.

On a typical case, I am taking two roles for Search Engine Optimization – Business and Search Engine Optimizer.

Businesses may not be interested in how a specific URL is ranking in Google rather they would be very interested in how are they doing in Search Engine Optimization as a whole and what’s its contribution in the total traffic acquisition to the website and how is it compared to competition.  (As a sidenote: Make sure you only measure qualified traffic using the metrics like Committed Visits).  The metrics would be “Share of Traffic” or “Average Variance from the Competition”

Search Engine Optimizers on the other hand would pay attention to the site-level metrics for monitoring the trends and page-level metrics for re-optimization purposes.

On both the stakeholders above, it is important they define what is important to their business and objective of the SEO Program and determine the success metrics.  For example, for big brands it could be branding which is objective of the SEO program….so ranking is relatively important to actual visits from search engines as it gives free impressions for their listing in the search engines.  However, for a small biz owners it is $ more important.  He/She may not be interested to get traffic that doesn’t convert to $ at his/her website.  For them it could be “$ earned per Visit from Search Engine “would be a great metric.

Keeping both the stakeholders above in mind, I am creating the web metrics pyramid for SEO. In the above example, let’s assume business targets to generate US$10K a Month from the search engine traffic…so I put “Revenue as the success metric in the Level 1”

The above SEO Metrics Pyramid is created for illustrative purposes only the actual metrics vary based on the business requirements.