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Understanding And Exploiting Web 2.0: Impact Analysis For Web Sites

http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops/stimulate-2006/talk-impact-analysis/. Understanding And Exploiting Web 2.0: Impact Analysis For Web Sites. About This Talk

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Understanding And Exploiting Web 2.0: Impact Analysis For Web Sites

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  1. http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops/stimulate-2006/talk-impact-analysis/http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops/stimulate-2006/talk-impact-analysis/ Understanding And Exploiting Web 2.0: Impact Analysis For Web Sites About This Talk This talk gives an introduction to impact analysis for Web sites and describes how Web 2.0 services can be used to support this work. Brian Kelly UKOLN University of Bath Bath Email B.Kelly@ukoln.ac.uk Resources bookmarked using 'stimulate-2006-impact' tag UKOLN is supported by: This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-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. Deeper analysis: • Popular article on "Are You Linking To A Porn Site?", April 1999 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, social 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. http://www.linkpopularity.com/ 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) It may be desirable to remove links from your own Web site, otherwise growth may just reflect growth in your site Note that you can receive a monthly email report, which can provide information on trends Many site analysis tools now provide RSS feeds. This can help Web managers in their monitoring activities

  8. Technorati: • There's more to search engines than Google • Searches Blogs, RSS news feeds, etc. • Use of tags can help searching social networking services such as Blogs, Flickr, etc 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. Impact Of Blogs http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/ • University of Warwick Blog service was first in UK • It has proved very popular: • 4,293 Blogs • 76,987 entries • 174,106 comments • Impact: • People willing to post & even more willing to respond (average over 2 comments per posting) Impact can be measured by size of community, nos. of entries, nos. of responses, impact in real world, etc. (see talk at ILI 2006 )

  11. http://www.meanboyfriend.com/overdue_ideas/2006/06/10_years_of_the.htmlhttp://www.meanboyfriend.com/overdue_ideas/2006/06/10_years_of_the.html • Finding Blogs (e.g. tags, Technorati) • Blogs associated with Web site Official Bloggers has proved useful: set a standard for others; claimed a tag in tag space; shown benefits of trust; … Blogs provides good indication of user satisfaction and of impact analysis of event "I've come back with ideas to …" Using Blogs Impact Analysis • Blogs can make it easier to gather quotes & other impact measures: http://j4.livejournal.com/2006/06/19/

  12. 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

  13. 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/

  14. 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')

  15. Sharing Resources http://del.icio.us/lisbk/iwmw2006-parallel-kelly-phipps • 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)

  16. 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

  17. User testing • How do users navigate site? • What's difficult to find? • Have they achieved their aims? Impact Analysis • How has Web site influenced the users? • What do the users find interesting? • What changes do users make as a consequence? 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.

  18. 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 > 25 million page views and > 4 millionvisitors See <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops/webmaster-2006/talks/sidhu/>

  19. 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 <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops/webmaster-2006/talks/sidhu/>

  20. Bigger Picture • How do people find my site? Three basic ways Direct Entry External Referrer Search Engines Overall 56.29% 20.93 28.66 External 39.98 21.62 38.38% Taken from <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/workshops/webmaster-2006/talks/sidhu/>

  21. Sheffield Cass UCL Aberdeen TVU CCCU Visitors from search engines – Number of visitors Percentage of visitors from search engines Number of visitors per day University General

  22. 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 <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/qa-focus/documents/briefings/briefing-99/> • Would sector statistics be useful for your sector?

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