Measuring User Motivation from Server Log Files
http://www.microsoft.com/usability/webconf/fuller/fuller.htm

Fuller, Rodney and Johannes J. de Graaff
Microsoft
1996

Abstract:

Estimating user interest and motivation by just counting page requests from a World Wide Web server log (or "hits") provides a distorted metric of user activity. Some of the reasons why this metric is unreliable are that the path dependent nature of hyperlink usability treats index and navigational aid pages as equal to the goal, because differenes in web browsers can determine how effectively users can percieve content and navigational alternatives, and because the poorly designed structure and content of the documents themselves can inhibit users from finding what they are looking for. This paper proposes that measures of how much time users spend looking at a page are better estimates of user interest than page hits, providing simple human factors principles have been applied. An extended example of how this method might be used to collect and analyze data is also included. The types of decisions that can be made by authors and system administrators based on a time-based metric of user interest is summarized.