Measuring How People Use

Your Pages with Web

Analytics

Michael Beasley

@UXMikeBeasley

What is web analytics?

Web analytics = tools + practice

A quantitative source of data

A way of measuring what users do on your

website and how they got there

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How it works

1. When the user’s browser loads a page, analytics

records:

1. What page was loaded

2. The time it was loaded

3. Where the user came from (another page on this site, from a

search engine, etc)

4. Browser version, operating system, IP address

2. The analytics tool processes these data and makes

them presentable

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Here’s

what

Google

Analytics

looks like

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What you can and can't measure

"What" questions, not "Why" questions

As in, "what have people done in the past?"

as opposed to "why are they doing it?"

You get to see what people do in aggregate,

but not what individuals do

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Why web analytics?

• What pages are people looking at?

• How long do they spend on those pages?

• How many pages do they visit?

• How do they get to your site?

• What do they search for in search

engines? On the site itself?

Today we will focus on how users interact

with your site’s pages. @UXMikeBeasley 6 Measuring How People Use Your Pages

Let’s look at

some data

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Pageviews and unique pageviews

For a selected time range:

• Every time a user goes to a page, that’s

one pageview

• If the user goes to the same page five

times, that’s five pageviews

• If the user goes to the same page five

times, that’s one unique pageview

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Average time on page Web analytics tracks how long users spend

on any page before moving on to another

page.

For any page, you can calculate the average

amount of time users spend on that page.

You don’t know what they’re doing on that

page, but a higher time on page means

users have more time to do something. @UXMikeBeasley 9 Measuring How People Use Your Pages

Entrances and bounce rate

Users can enter your site on any page. An

entrance is when a user enters your site on

whatever page you’re looking at.

Maybe they found it in a search engine or

bookmarked the URL.

The user bounces if they leave without

looking at any other pages on your site.

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% Exit (AKA exit rate)

Of all those pageviews, this is how many

were the last time a user looked at this page

before leaving the site.

This is different than bounce rate—those are

only the users that entered your site on this

page.

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Analysis: Look for the outliers

What are the pages with the highest values

for a metric?

Which have the lowest?

Which pages deviate the most from

average?

Are there any numbers that just surprise

you?

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Analysis

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Long average time

(2:10)

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This is very long and

the beginning is dense

The second half is

easier to skim

Users are perhaps very

motivated to read this?

Low average

time (1:08)

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Much shorter

but broken up

very well

Users are

probably

skimming the

whole thing

Even lower

average time

(1:00)

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A lot of text in

huge blocks, no

easy-to-harvest

tips

No one is

reading all this

text

What pages do users view?

It can hurt to find this out, sometimes.

Do the numbers reflect how interesting the

content is?

Or how easy it is to find?

Or both?

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Look at the pages people visit

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Measuring How People Use Your Pages

… and the pages they don’t visit

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Measuring How People Use Your Pages

Acting on your findings

If people aren’t spending a lot of time on or

bouncing a lot from an important page:

• Does the writing need work?

• Were the links to this page misleading?

• Are there links on this page that are too

enticing for users to resist?

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Acting on your findings, continued For very popular pages:

• Can this topic be expanded (to more

pages)?

• Are there opportunities to link from this

content to other relevant pages?

For unpopular pages:

• Do you need better links to those pages?

• Do users really want to read it?

• Can they find it?

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What’s next?

You may have questions you can answer

with usability testing.

Another great idea: add a survey to gather

data about why users behave as they do.

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But wait, there’s more!

Unsurprisingly, you can measure more

aspects of user behavior with web analytics,

such as:

• How they move from page to page

• What they searched for in search engines

• What they searched for on your site

• How many fill out a form/register on your

site

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Context is everything

Web analytics give you a piece of the

picture.

It’s a pretty awesome piece, though.

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Questions?

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