In our last issue, we reported on a controversy over the interpretation and use of web site traffic statistics which blew up at our July conference Building the Perfect Council Website ‘08, co-hosted with the Society of IT Management (Socitm).
In his conference address Nick Mailer, a director of leading web hosting company Positive Internet, had argued that website statistics can be hard to interpret and lack objective meaning. In response Huw Williams, public services consultant at Logan Tod & Co, defended the cautious use of some stats as a valuable guide to user behaviour.
The debate continued following publication of the articles on our blog, E-Government Bulletin Live (see http://www.headstar.com/egblive/?p=138 ).
Allan Tanner, Secretary to the Management Board, Forestry Commission Scotland, said: “I work on a site that is in transition and we desperately need intelligence to inform changes that need made, or that we think we should make.
“Web stats are a vital tool in this. It is clear that just looking at page views and visits in isolation is nigh on useless, however they can be useful in effecting comparisons between different parts of a site.
“Identifying keyword trends is also very useful – for example, we provide an educational resource called ‘tree trunk’, but our stats showed that many users were performing searches looking for information on the trunk of a tree, and arriving at our pages, which were not appropriate for their search. Now we are revising the section and renaming it more appropriately in order to make its purpose clear to users. Without looking at our stats, we would never have had this information.
“I think the key is not to get hung up on numbers, rather, look at trends over time to help determine what users are doing, where they are coming from and what they are searching for. It’s not the be all and end all but it can still be a very powerful tool for improving the usability of your site.”
And the speaker who kick-started the debate, Nick Mailer, returned to our blog to respond to some of Huw Williams’ points. He wrote: “Huw, thank you for the kind comments. An after- lunch talk, as you rightly identify, needs to exhibit the smelling salts of strong dialectic; but in reality, we probably agree more than we disagree.
“My primary point was not so much that web stats are useless, but that we need to be conscious is that the data upon which it is based is, in a sense, passive, and that we bring meaning to that data. Having more people conscious of what compromises, delineations and assumptions we bring forth in bringing that meaning makes it more – well – meaningful!
“Otherwise, people who think that web stats represent some sort of Platonic Truth rather than a subtle interpretation of limited data are in for disappointment.”
Readers are encouraged to continue the debate online: http://www.headstar.com/egblive/?p=138.
