June 3rd, 2009
I’m only on page 88 of my Advanced Web metrics with Google Analytics book. (Still over 250 pages to go). Here’s an interesting quote from page 84:
Site Search Usage
The Site Search reports contained in the Content section of Google Analytics are dedicated to understanding the usage of your internal search engine (if you have one). For large, complex websites with thousands, and in some case hundreds of thousands, of product pages, having an internal site search engine is critical for a successful visitor experience - no navigational system can perform as well as a good internal search engine in these cases.
At the very least, site search reports are a form of market research - every time visitors enter a keyword into your search box, they are telling you exactly what they want to find on your website. Marketers can use this information to better target campaigns. Product managers can use this as a feedback mechanism for designing new features or adding new products.
A report on the search terms used by visitors on your website is clearly powerful information for your organization. However, understanding where on your website a visitor reaches for the search box, what page they go to following a search, how long they stay on your site after conducting a search, whether they perform further search refinements, whether they are more likely to make a conversion, and whether their average order value is higher are also vital clues that can help you optimize the visitor experience.
Good points. I’m in fact using this blog’s search box to do this very analysis, though I can see one can get much more information by using GA and Google’s internal search engine. Fortunately there is a MediaWiki extension for this, which should be quick to implement. I’m so busy with testing right now that I haven’t yet had a chance!
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June 2nd, 2009
This morning I asked a Unisa student (someone I work with, doing his honours in linguistics) to have a look at the home page and give his impressions.
The following pic is what he saw (please excuse the spacing and stuff… this is only a skeleton draft!)
Here’s what Tester # 1 said:
* He liked the satellite map and wanted to zoom in even more, and go to the library 
* He had to think a bit about what the “Recent edits” links were about, and didn’t know what the image of the textbook was. Reason: these were modules he wasn’t taking and it was a textbook he didn’t recognise. After a few seconds he recognised the Unisa module code format and correctly guessed what was going on.
* He liked the idea of the poll, but didn’t even read the question. Don’t worry, I’ll choose another design with a larger font.
* Surprise: He thought the category tag cloud should appear higher up, not at the bottom of the page, because you had to scroll in order to see it. He said that seeing the subject names (Computer science, Law… Linguistics!) made it more obvious what the site was about, so I’ve gone ahead and put it smack bang in the middle of the page, as you can see. I think I originally thought of putting it at the bottom because that’s where tag clouds are often found on websites. It’s so good to get an outsider’s opinion!
Posted in Home Page, Testing | No Comments »
June 1st, 2009
I’ve now finished reading one of my new computer books I recently ordered online: Building Findable websites.
Here’s a quote from page 152, which illustrates the importance of search boxes:
Search has become an indispensable means of navigation for most users. During usability test sessions I’ve watched users pass up very conspicuous, logical navigation systems in favor of search to complete every task. Search is more than an added convenience; it’s an essential tool that users expect to find on sites.
After thinking some more on this topic, I realised that the WikiStudent search box is even more important that I first thought, for this reason: WikiStudent is going to use MediaWiki and will closely resemble Wikipedia. On Wikipedia, how do you find stuff? By typing something in the search box! Wikipedia doesn’t have the structured navigation that WikiStudent will have, which is what’s making me believe that students will go straight to the familiar-looking search box. I’ll be working at making sure that you can find absolutely everything on the website via that little box!
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May 31st, 2009
May was the extension month, and my goal was to implement all the necessary extensions for WikiStudent. Here is a list of the ones I’ve tested on the live server so far:
- Sitemap (to create an XML sitemap for search engines)
- Category Tag Cloud (to display subject names on the home page in tag cloud format)
- Polls (to show PollDaddy polls on the module pages)
- SimpleFeed (for the student jobs pages)
- NewsFeed (to display the most recently edited module pages on the home page)
- Tree & Menu (for the persistent left-hand navigation)
- Breadcrumbs (to show “where am I?” at the top of every page)
- Google Maps (to display a satellite map of Unisa on the home page)
- Include (to display pictures of textbooks, which are wrapped in iframes)
There are still a couple more I’d like to use. I believe that when the site is finished it will use about a dozen more extensions. At least the most important ones have been finalised!
June will be the testing month, where I ask users to test the site and make necessary changes. I also want to get the editing help / documentation completed. Lots and lots of work!
Tags: Extensions, Goals
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May 30th, 2009
I came across a brilliant collapsable menu tree, for the left-hand persistent navigation. It’s called TreeAndMenu and here is a screenshot of what it looks like on another wiki:
When you click on the ‘+’ next to a folder, it expands to show you the pages included. On WikiStudent, I’m going to have categories as folders, and pages within those categories beneath them.
I’ve installed this extension already, but still need to take care of the styling, and make the items expandable / collapsable. A quick preview of what it looks like at the moment:
So, in the above example, “PLS” will have a folder icon, and expanding it will reveal the page “PLS102Y”, which you click on to get to the page. Nice, don’t you think?
Tags: Extensions
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