Characterizing Audience for Informational Web Site Design    

Presents a sample of audience analysis results and discusses how they were used to make design decisions. Reflects on the strategy, the insights gained from the data, and the impact of the results on the subject Web site.

Turns, Jennifer and Tracey S. Wagner. Technical Communication Online (2004). Articles>Web Design>Audience Analysis

Competitive Analysis: Understanding the Market Context

Effective web design, from the simplest brochure website to the most complex web application, needs to involve an understanding of context. While user-centered design focuses on user needs/tasks, and information architecture focuses on content, these two aspects alone offer an incomplete picture. What is missing is the context: the environment in which the website or web application is used as well as the market in which it exists.

Withrow, Jason. Boxes and Arrows (2006). Articles>Web Design>Audience Analysis>Rhetoric

Configure Web Logs in Apache

Traffic statistics have a huge impact on a Website's success, and Apache provides one of the most powerful and flexible logging features available today. Blane explains the nitty-gritty of configuring Apache Weblogs in this handy how-to.

Warrene, Blane. SitePoint (2004). Design>Web Design>Audience Analysis>Log Analysis

"Curb Cuts" on the Information Highway: Older Adults and the Internet    

With demographic and social trends in mind, technical communicators should be examining the online communication needs of elderly people who may share certain characteristics with other Internet users, particularly the disabled community. Although education, universal design, and accessibility initiatives help us address many of the developmental and cultural barriers elderly Internet users face, this article examines some current offerings, analyzing the growing elderly audience to better incorporate usability into Web design.

O'Hara, Karen. Technical Communication Quarterly (2004). Design>Web Design>Audience Analysis>Elderly

Data Quality Sucks, Let's Just Get Over It

Data quality on the internet absolutely sucks. And there is nothing you can do about it. At least for now.

Kaushik, Avinash. Occam's Razor (2006). Articles>Web Design>Audience Analysis>Log Analysis

Log Analysis - A Brief Overview

Log files are text files which can range in size from 1KB to 100MB, depending on the traffic at a given a web site. Webmeisters measure traffic by the number of hits or accesses their site receives in a duration of time.

Rubin, Jeffrey. Florida State University (1996). Articles>Web Design>Audience Analysis>Log Analysis

Making Smart Use of Web Analytics  

What’s the difference between simply measuring page hits and views, and actually converting site visits to sales? Smart use of Web analytics.

Cummings, Joanne. PDFzone (2004). Design>Web Design>Audience Analysis>Log Analysis

Measuring the Influence of Blogs on Consumers, the Media and Corporate Reputation

According to the report "State of the News Media 2005" from the Project for Excellence in Journalism, "more than a third of Americans, some 36 percent, are regular consumers of four or more different kinds of news outlets—network news, local TV, newspapers, cable, radio, the Internet and magazines."

Woods, Julie. Business Communication World (2005). Articles>Web Design>Audience Analysis>Blogging

Multidimensional Audience Analysis for Dynamic Information    

As technical communication gains the technology to deliver dynamic custom documents, the importance of audience analysis increases. As a major factor in supporting dynamic adjustment of document content, the audience analysis must clearly capture the range of user goals and information needs in a flexible manner. Replacing a linear audience analysis model with a multidimensional model provides one method of achieving that flexibility. With a minimum of three separate dimensions to capture topic knowledge, detail required, and user cognitive ability, this model provides the writer a means of connecting content with information requirements and ensuring the dynamic document fits varying audience needs.

Albers, Michael J. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2003). Articles>Web Design>Audience Analysis>Personalization

Organizational Size, Multiple Audiences, and Web Site Design    

The designer's perspective sometimes focuses on the designer's tastes and ignores the needs and preferences of the user. Nielsen (1999) recognized the insufficiency of the designer's perspective and stressed the need to focus on usability in Web page design. The usability principle calls for the designer to prioritize the user's need over the designer's intuition and worldview. The need to bridge the gap between the designer's perspective and the user's perspective has been extensively addressed in the computer software system design literature.

Lin, Canchu. Technical Communication Online (2002). Design>Web Design>Audience Analysis

References Available Upon Request  

Find out where your visitors come from.

Fleishman, Glenn. Adobe Magazine (1999). Design>Web Design>Audience Analysis>Log Analysis

Remembering Your Reader in Web Design

Technology advancements have allowed for many improvements and enhancements in web design. Drastic changes have been made concerning programming, development, and available features. From flash animations, to blog pages, forums, and live chat, website designers have a multitude of design elements that can be added to their websites. Multimedia products such as audio, video, and podcasts are some of the other advancements in web design. One thing that has not changed, however, is the website readers. Successful website developers know and understand this concept, and apply it to every website that they design.

Haig, Anders. ReEncoded (2008). Articles>Web Design>Rhetoric>Audience Analysis

Selling Your Brand by Using Your Web Site as a Customer Research Tool

With companies moving business online, the Internet has become a source of profit for them. We all know how this works. You establish an online presence, sell your brand well—and you make money. Let’s rewind. We are selling our brands online, but doing it well is the challenge. To do it well, keep the following in mind: customer research is an important factor in generating business revenues, so it must be done right—that is, at the right place and at the right time; the online medium should not be the only way of gathering customer information; recognizing emerging trends—behavioral, demographic and emotional—helps companies move forward strategically.

Kirmani, Afshan. UXmatters (2008). Articles>Web Design>Marketing>Audience Analysis

Tracking Your Users in the Access Logs

Most server log analysis applications on the market simply present usage information grouped by date with sub-groupings like daily averages and top downloads by file size. While this can be useful, it doesn't begin to touch the range of information available to be gleaned from the logs with a little creativity.

Hoyt, Philip. evolt (2005). Articles>Web Design>Audience Analysis>Log Analysis

Unsuspected Correlations Are Sweet!

Tracking web usage with a one dimensional mindset (or in a silo) means that you will end up missing so much of the picture.

Kaushik, Avinash. Occam's Razor (2006). Articles>Web Design>Audience Analysis>Log Analysis

Using Your Web Stats for SEO: Search Marketing Analysis from Web Stats

Last week, Jennifer covered the basics of web statistics and what they should mean for you. Now that you have a fairly good handle on what all these statistics mean, how do you put them to work for you? These concerns are answered in this article.

Sullivan Cassidy, Jennifer. SEOchat (2005). Articles>Web Design>Audience Analysis>Log Analysis

Visits, Visitors, and Hits  

What do people mean when they talk about 'hits,' 'visits,' and 'visitors?'

Fleishman, Glenn. Adobe Magazine (1996). Design>Web Design>Audience Analysis>Log Analysis

Web Analytics: Insights From the Front Line, Part 2

2008 will see a more serious attempt to get Web analytics to become a part of business analytics. We're still a silo in most companies (data and people). We'll see more collaboration and innovation in helping Web data become a core part of the company data to truly give end-to-end visibility (and maybe the holy grail of multichannel analytics/impact).

Mason, Neil. ClickZ (2008). Articles>Web Design>Audience Analysis>Log Analysis

Web Site Stats: A Look Behind The Numbers

In the dot.com boom of the 1990s, an electronic goldrush began as companies flocked like new age prospectors seeking to plant their stake in this digital revolution that has today transformed the ways companies communicate and do business around the globe. Because the web is becoming a viable communications channel, it's important that communications professionals understand how the content they're putting up on a web site is delivering to users the kind of value that is realizing a return on their investment.

Gannon, Joseph P. Communication World Bulletin (2003). Articles>Web Design>Audience Analysis>Log Analysis

Web Statistics: The Truth is in There  

In this study, we assessed and restructured Web server log statistics to analyze our customers’ use of a large-scale Internet library. We formulated questions about how these users might be accessing and navigating the information, then developed our own tools to sort and gather relevant statistics from the log files. We discuss specific successful procedures as well as limitations of the methods. Some of our findings may result in further redesign of the Web site. We also identify areas of interest for further research.

Hood, Teresa L., Linda Jorgensen and Leo J. Smith. STC Proceedings (1998). Articles>Web Design>Audience Analysis>Log Analysis

Design Decisions vs. Audience Considerations

Deep down below the layers of interface, CSS, HTML, and XML—down where only the geekiest among us roam—everything comes down to this: it’s all zeroes and ones. On or off. The digital switch Though interaction and conversion becomes a bit more complicated at the point the interface meets the visitor, though there are a few more shades of gray, in the end it comes down to the same thing: yes or no.

Ragle-Davis, Robin. Digital Web Magazine (2008). Articles>Web Design>Interaction Design>Audience Analysis

Analyzing Your Traffic  

Discover your site’s findability triumphs and tragedies with traffic analysis systems.

Walter, Aarron. Building Findable Websites (2008). Articles>Web Design>Audience Analysis>Log Analysis

Web Log Analysis

Getting to know your audience is key to designing a successful website. Because your audience may be spread around the world, learning about the users of your site may be quite a challenge. Even if you think you have a pretty good idea of who your audience is, in many cases, there's a lot of information that you won't know--for example, what browsers your users are using, whether or not they are connecting from on or off campus, or what pages they find most useful.

Novogrodsky, Seth. University of California Berkeley (2000). Articles>Web Design>Audience Analysis>Log Analysis

What's Important to Measure on Your Website?

Websites are very measurable. However, reams of data can be time consuming and confusing. The knack is to know what is really important to measure. This includes the following: reader actions; reader numbers; most and least popular pages; subscribers; external links; search keywords; page size; broken links and malfunctioning processes.

McGovern, Gerry. New Thinking (2003). Articles>Web Design>Audience Analysis>Log Analysis

Are You Using the Wrong Web Metrics?

Do you base success on measuring the volume of visitors and page impressions? Such measures may in fact reflect the failure--rather than the success--of your website.

McGovern, Gerry. New Thinking (2006). Articles>Web Design>Audience Analysis>Log Analysis