Urchin & Website Usability

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

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”

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?

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

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/

Traffic Summary

• Urchin – Traffic > Summary

Status and Errors

• Pages & Files > Status and Errors

Status and Errors

• Essential for determining where problems exist of your website

404 Page Not Found Errors

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

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

404 Solutions – Bad Links Your Site

• Bad links on your site – Run site-wide link checks– Use Dreamweaver’s 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).

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

404 Solutions – Bookmarks

• Send known users a reminder

• Set up dummy pages – Pages in directories users are still attempting to view

• Create re-directs

404 Solutions – Custom Error Page

• Custom errors page

Tracking Users - Navigation

Tracking Users – Bounce Rate

• Navigation > Bounce Rate

Tracking Users – Bounce Rate

• Visitors who enter your website and exit without viewing other pages

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

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?

Tracking Users – Bounce Rate

• Analyze individual pages – assess drop off

• Possible issues:– Download time– Outbound links– Navigation issues– Other elements

Tracking Users – Click Paths

• Navigation > Click Paths

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

Tracking Users – Pageviews

• Navigation > Pageviews

Tracking Users – Pageviews

• Long page views can mean:– Users are reading– Users are looking

around– Or it can mean

download time is too long

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: it’s FREE! • Currently not accepting new accounts• Keep checking back to sign up:

http://www.google.com/analytics/index.html