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Urchin & Website Usability

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Usability Study Usability study is a repetitive process that involves testing a site and then using the test results to change the tested site to better meet users' needs Urchin can assist in studying the usability of your website

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Usability Study Important to think: how well is our site allowing the users to meet their goals rather than how well do the users do on our site

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Urchin and Usability For Content and Web Developers Urchin can help answer questions about your web traffic: What site content are people most interested in? How many people reach a target page on my website? If users abandon the website before purchasing, when do they stop and why? What types of error results do users receive and why are users receiving these errors?

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Good Usability vs. Poor Usability An essential question to ask is: Is my website efficient and effective? Involves using website optimization tools such as Urchin and reviewing the design and content of your website including: Navigation Links Layout Quality of content

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Poor Usability Some signs of poor user experience would be: Lots of traffic, few purchases Visitors only hitting the top level of your site -- not deeper pages Lack of repeat customers Excellent site for resources on website usability - http://www.usableweb.com/http://www.usableweb.com/

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Traffic Summary Urchin Traffic > Summary

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Status and Errors Pages & Files > Status and Errors

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Status and Errors Essential for determining where problems exist of your website

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404 Page Not Found Errors 404 Page Not Found Errors Pages not found when requested

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404 Errors Possible Causes Causes are varied Bad links on your site Bad links on other sites linking to your site The use of old bookmarks/favorites or saved links

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404 Solutions Bad Links Your Site Bad links on your site Run site-wide link checks Use Dreamweavers built in link checker or one of the free link checker sources available on the web which check both internal and external links. Xenu Link Sleuth (http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html).http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

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404 Solutions Bad Links Other Sites Bad links on other sites Send out reminders to known sites that you have updated your website Inform search engines to reassess your website for URLs Update directories your site is listed with

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404 Solutions Bookmarks Send known users a reminder Set up dummy pages Pages in directories users are still attempting to view Create re-directs

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404 Solutions Custom Error Page Custom errors page

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Tracking Users - Navigation

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Tracking Users Bounce Rate Navigation > Bounce Rate

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Tracking Users Bounce Rate Visitors who enter your website and exit without viewing other pages

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Tracking Users Bounce Rate Statistically the top entrance page is the top exit page Goal: Lower the ratio of exits to entrances a page, to the smallest possible number Add Call to Actions to entice additional clicks

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Tracking Users Bounce Rate Questions that should be asked: On which pages are a high bounce rate occurring on? Is there a logical explanation? Are there problems on these pages that need to be looked at?

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Tracking Users Bounce Rate Analyze individual pages assess drop off Possible issues: Download time Outbound links Navigation issues Other elements

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Tracking Users Click Paths Navigation > Click Paths

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Tracking Users Click Paths Click Paths - the most popular paths traveled by your site's visitors Each entry lists one or more pages in the order they are viewed using arrows

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Tracking Users Pageviews Navigation > Pageviews

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Tracking Users Pageviews Long page views can mean: Users are reading Users are looking around Or it can mean download time is too long

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Google Analytics & Urchin Google recently purchased Urchin Some new features in Google Analytics Funnel Visualization Tracking outbound links Keyword Campaign comparison The best thing about it is: its FREE! Currently not accepting new accounts Keep checking back to sign up: http://www.google.com/analytics/index.html http://www.google.com/analytics/index.html