Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
my blog includes basic navigation and an internal site search. i set up three
segments as described earlier and applied them to a basic visit report, as shown in
Figure 13.17.
Figure 13.17
Segmented Visit report
this report concludes that the visitors aren't focused on search and that most
people navigate through the site. with this knowledge alone, we can make content
decisions, such as applying a content widget like “related pages” rather than investing
further in search at this point in time.
you might want to include first-time visitors and returning visitors as well,
ensuring that you create a fair representation.
so to conclude, if you have mainly search-dominant visitors, you should engage
in serious usability analysis focused on incorporating internal search into your overall
site navigation. you might include such goals as determining the width of your internal
search box or listing the five most-searched-for terms.
on the other hand, if you have mainly navigation-dominant users, you will be
wasting valuable screen real estate on unused search elements. not only that, you will
be sending your users down a path they are not comfortable with. so perform the anal-
ysis to figure out which path (search or navigation) you should focus on.
and keep in mind that this behavior is most likely different from section to sec-
tion of your web property.
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Using Competitive Intelligence
Forming conclusions about overall market trends based on your own site-specific
behavioral data may be dangerous. the surrounding market has, at most, a direct
impact on your data; at the least, it can help you put your site-based conclusions in
perspective. For example, i would hesitate to conclude that yahoo! news was super
successful during the Beijing olympics without comparing the competitive news sites.
if all major news sites covering the event had an increase in articles read or a metric
like page views of 12 percent while yahoo! news only had 7 percent, we should prob-
ably keep the champagne in the cooler for another day.
