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Published byJuniper Jacobs Modified over 9 years ago
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NSDL Webmetrics: An Introduction Mick Khoo Evaluation coordinator NSDL Core Integration mjkhoo@ucar.edu
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What Are Webmetrics? Measurements of users’ interactions with a web site Support understanding, management and improvement of web sites and online presence There are no standard webmetrics Different webmetrics tools measure user interaction in different ways
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Some Basic Webmetrics Concepts Visitor A person visiting your site from an Internet computer Page view Record of that person’s viewing of a web page (html file) Hit Web page plus all files in that page (html + images, etc.) Visit Viewing of one or more linked web pages Ends after period of inactivity (e.g. 30 mins) Unique visit Aggregation of visits by same visitor in a specified time E.g. 5 visits in one day = 1 unique visit
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5 Webmetrics Caveats Visits ≠ page views ≠ hits Visitor ≠ person Not all visitors count Traffic varies over time Different webmetrics tools measure use on the same site in different ways
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Caveat 1: Visits ≠ Page Views ≠ Hits Unique visits Visits Page Views Hits Day 1 Day 2 # 2 5 12 36 I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I The same visitor will produce different numbers, depending on the chosen stat E.g. visitor Y, using site X over two days:
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Caveat 1: Visits ≠ Page Views ≠ Hits Unique visits Visits Page Views Hits Day 1 Day 2 # 2 5 12 36 I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I The same visitor will produce different numbers, depending on the chosen stat E.g. visitor Y, using site X over two days:
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Caveat 2: A Visitor ≠ A Person Multiple students on the same computer (e.g. computer lab, collaborative assignment) can count as one visitor A teacher visiting nsdl.org from her office and later from her home computer will be counted as two separate visitors A visitor could be a non-human bot/crawler indexing your site
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Caveat 3: Not All Visitors Count Visitors you want to count Human beings who do things on your site Visitors you want to exclude Human beings who build your site (developers, testers, etc.) Non-human beings - bots, crawlers, etc. who are indexing your site Different methods for excluding visitors IP address blocking, cookies, etc.
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Caveat 4: Traffic Varies Over Time Regular (daily, weekly, monthly, annual) and irregular fluctuations Long-term trends require reliable longitudinal baseline statistics that smooth out these fluctuations Minimum of 1 year’s stats required NSDL not there yet - still building inter- project agreement on baseline measurements
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Example 1: Daily Fluctuations
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Morning
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Example 1: Daily Fluctuations Evening
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Example 1: Daily Fluctuations
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East coastWest coast
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Example 2: Monthly Fluctuations
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Weekend
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Example 2: Monthly Fluctuations
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Thanksgiving
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Caveat 5: Different Tools Count Traffic in Different Ways Differences (and their criteria) are obscure Incorrect analogy for metrics: utilitie bill 2 people + same use = same bill More correct analogy: cell phone bill 2 people + same use + different plans = different bills Difficult to map/standardize across tools
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NSDL Webmetrics 212 NSDL projects funded since 2000 Projects use different webmetrics tools Lack of standardized NSDL webmetrics Makes cross-site comparisons difficult Makes strategic NSDL planning difficult Solution: third party metrics contracted from Omniture (omniture.com) nsdl.org, Pathways projects, and DLESE ~$20,000 p.a.
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Omniture Omniture measures site traffic remotely, using javascript and cookies Omniture standardizes metrics across all monitored sites Data and analyses available in a browser Each site sees only their own metrics All metrics are viewable in central CI account Sites can still implement their own server metrics
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Current Omniture Status Omniture stats are lower (more rigorous) than projects’ own server-based web metrics Bots/crawlers excluded March 06: nsdl.org Omniture: ~14k/month, ~170k/year c.f. AWStats:~28k/month, ~350k/year March 06: nsdl.org + Pathways + DLESE Omniture:~110k/month, ~1.3m/year
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Future Directions Refine our Omniture ‘menu’ Implement cross-project tracking E.g. track visitors from nsdl.org to Pathways Develop NSDL tools to overlay Omniture data Compare use across different projects Develop a ‘task-centric’ model of webmetrics Redefine unit of analysis from ‘visit’ to ‘task’ Can we identify typical educator task profiles from webmetrics?
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