another kind of web logs

Today the assistant director and I puzzled over the monthly web stats from our site trying to discern patterns and deduce meaning. I’m good with stats, but bad with ones that have been post-processed with tools I’m not super-knowledgeable about. As with many web tricks, I prefer to check the raw log files to answer questions like “Why are 2% of our hits going to the 404 page?” and “Are we just seeing an increase in hits because we finally made the library web site the home page on all library’s computers?” I encourage you to extract meaning from your web site statistics. Karen Coombs over at Library Web Chic has laid out some intro pointers on what to look for when you look at your logs.

designing for users

Hey what a surprise, when we do user-centered design of our web tools, users like using them! Please read: What words and where? Applying usability testing techniques to name a new live reference service. many of the lessons they learned are applicable to any library web site.

3. Users tended to ignore links above the main content area, especially if the links were graphic images. They expected these images to be banner ads and have, over time, learned to ignore them.
4. Users were not familiar with library jargon such as “database” or “interlibrary loan.”[pscott]