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Communication Perspectives
CHAPTER 3 THEORETICAL PART
Usability analysis and web analytics
October 19-23, 2015
Prof. Lorenzo Cantoni
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In this chapter we are going to focus our attention on the usability of online
communication, and on its addressees actual usages.
At a first sight, we might approach usability as being the ease of use. The
International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has provided a more in-depth
definition. Six elements are stressed: extent to which a product can be used by
specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction
in a specified context of use (ISO, 1998, n. 11).
First of all, let us use a very simple example of a chair. Under which conditions can I say
that it is usable?
It depends on the users, who deal with it: its stakeholders. A chair suitable for
an adult might be very uncomfortable for a child. The chair we use while at the
dentist is not appropriate for having lunch.
Different stakeholders might have different goals. For instance, the chairs in a
university lecture room are meant for students to feel comfortable, but not to
the point of them falling asleep. Also they should be used by room cleaners to
move around easily, clean and put back in line without much effort.
The use should be effective: it should meet expectations and needs of the
stakeholders.
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become invisible. Alternatively, automatic tools could execute the script without the
page being visited, hence artificially creating fake visits.
Whichever strategy one adopts, there are three major families of information web
analytics can provide to an online communication expert.
We might know a lot about the users: How many are they? How many visits do
they make? How many pages do they access per visit? When do they visit and
from which countries? Which apparatuses do they use? Moreover, the
demographics characteristics, such as age, sex, and interests.
We can learn if they have directly accessed the website, through typing its
address, or via a bookmark, or if they have reached it by clicking on a link in
another website (through referral). While mapping referrals, three cases are
particularly interesting, they are:
o a search engine, which allows us to know the keywords used in order to
reach our website;
o a regular website;
o a social network.
We can also learn which pages and sections are visited, how many times, in
which order, and for how long. Additionally we can learn which pages are being
accessed first (landing pages), or the last ones, from which the user leaves the
website.
Once the data are known, with the caveat that they are always approximations, we
need to understand and evaluate what kind of implications it has on our business.
Every time we need to make hypotheses and inferences, which can then guide our
managerial decisions. We can list here, based on the OCM, three major strategies.
Operate on the content (Pillar I): remove pages/sections that were never or
poorly accessed; optimize content to make it more suitable for human readers
and for search engines (SEO: Search Engine Optimization).
o Data: The section with the Russian translation of a destinations website
is almost never visited;
o Hypothesis: People are not interested;
o Decision: It is discontinued to avoid useless translation costs.
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Usability and usages are crucially important. At the end of the day, we develop online
communication tools in order to get in touch with intended publics. If they do not
listen to us or have an unsatisfactory experience while using our website/mobile app,
we fail to reach our communicative and business goal. We should be constantly aware
of the fact that our competitors are just a click away and that if we failed to deliver a
high quality online experience, users can fly (or bounce) out.
REFERENCES:
Cantoni, L., & Tardini, S. (2006). Internet. London (UK) New York (NY): Routledge.
Inversini, A., Cantoni, L., & Bolchini, D. (2010). Presenting UsERA: User Experience Risk
Assessment Model. In Ulrike Gretzel, Rob Law & Matthias Fuchs (Eds.),
Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2010. Proceedings of
the International Conference in Lugano, Switzerland, February 10-12, 2010, (pp.
99-110). Wien New York: Springer.
ISO. (1998). ISO 9241. Ergonomic Requirements for Office Work with Visual Display
Terminals (VDTs) Part 11: Guidance on usability.
Tardini, S., Adukaite, A., & Cantoni L. (2014). How to do Things with Websites.
Reconsidering Austins Perlocutionary Act in Online Communication. Semiotica
2014, 425-437.
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