Item Pages: What We’ve Learned October 19, 2009
Posted by Sean Aery in : Assessment, Website Redesign , 2commentsWe have been assessing our web interface to Digital Collections for some time using a healthy variety of evaluation techniques and soliciting ideas for a new & improved interface. Let’s first take a look at our item pages, with an annotated review of our current site:
Here’s what we have learned about the item pages, broken down by source:
Web Analytics
- Our most-accessed items get viewed mostly via external links, especially from social media tools (like StumbleUpon) and Google Images.
- More than 3/4 of item page views are for the medium image view as opposed to the details view.
Usability Tests (Spring 2008)
Answering the important questions. May 5, 2009
Posted by nh48 in : Assessment , 1 comment so farRecently we implemented Google Analytics to track usage of our digital collections. Sean has already contributed several great posts about our digital collections use statistics, but one thing I find particularly interesting (and amusing) is that Google Analytics allows us to see the types of keywords our users are entering into Google, Yahoo, and other search engines, and where those keywords lead them in our digital collections.
Not surprisingly, some search queries are common and reveal the subject strengths of our digital collections. For example, the top three queries that bring users to our collections are “sheet music,” “ad access,” and “history of advertising.”
After scanning through thousands of these search queries, several distinct categories emerge: the known-item query (an exact title in quotes), the URL as query (e.g. http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/adaccess/), and the format query (e.g. “diaries” or “manuscripts”), among others. The most entertaining category, however, is the query issued in the form of a question.
Below are some of the important questions our users have asked with links to where they’ve found answers to those questions in our digital collections.
Presentation to Duke Libraries (2008 Usage Stats) March 4, 2009
Posted by Sean Aery in : Assessment, Presentations , 1 comment so farI presented this morning (March 4, 2009) at our monthly First Wednesday library IT presentation series about Digital Collections stats from 2008 server logs (slides below):
The slides are very basic. Included are some figures extracted from previous blog posts (http://library.duke.edu/blogs/digital-collections/category/assessment/) as well as ‘greatest hits’–the most-accessed item from each collection.
Video Discovery Stats for DSVA: A First Look February 25, 2009
Posted by Sean Aery in : Assessment, Diamonstein-Spielvogel , add a comment
Our Diamonstein-Spielvogel video archive collection, comprised of about 130 videos, was introduced this past fall and represents our first digital video collection. Our Digital Collections system (Tripod) does not yet support discovery within a video collection, so in the interim, we are using two external video services in tandem to host the collection and are relying on their native interfaces for search and retrieval.
- videos uploaded to iTunes U the week of September 21, 2008
- videos uploaded to YouTube the week of December 14, 2008
Each service provides some distinct advantages over the other. A basic matrix of differences can be found here:
http://www.oit.duke.edu/web-multimedia/multimedia/YouTube/index.html#faq
Usage
To gauge use, we looked at about 8 weeks of data in both systems following the publication of the videos in YouTube. There were 16,412 YouTube views, 993 iTunes downloads, and 392 iTunes previews.
Diamonstein-Spielvogel Video Archive Usage Stats
Dec 14, 2008 – Feb 8, 2009
Home(page) Economics February 23, 2009
Posted by Sean Aery in : Assessment , add a comment
As Tom mentioned, we’re in the process of re-examining our homepage (and the layout of individual collection homepages).
What do people actually do when they come to the Duke Digital Collections homepage as it is now? One way to tell is to review our server logs.
Here’s a look at the year in review.
2008 At a Glance: 68,325 homepage hits
| Activity from Homepage | Count | Pct |
|---|---|---|
| Browse directly to a collection homepage | 21,342 | 31.24% |
| Do a cross-collection search | 7,533 | 11.03% |
| Go to the homepage or an anchored section of it* | 2,549 | 3.73% |
| Browse the A-Z List of collections | 2,170 | 3.18% |
| Check out exhibits | 1,478 | 2.16% |
| Go to Duke Libraries homepage | 922 | 1.35% |
Collection Usage Stats for 2008 February 2, 2009
Posted by Sean Aery in : Assessment , 1 comment so far
Looking back at our 2008 web logs, we can learn a lot about how our system and our collections are being used. We hope to combine an analysis of this usage data with usability testing and other modes of evaluation to better inform our continued development of our system & interface in 2009.
Here are two separate charts (below): one for the first half of 2008 (Jan – June) and the other for the second half (July – Dec). The one on the right includes more collections (we introduced several throughout the year) and may be a more representative look at the usage. Also keep in mind that the collections vary in size (larger collections have more items *to be viewed* and often have more ways to formulate queries).
Click to enlarge:
Interesting findings
How We’re Found (or, Referrer Stats for 2008) January 23, 2009
Posted by Sean Aery in : Assessment , 1 comment so far
Now that 2008 is over, we’ll be posting a few charts & graphs that illustrate some interesting trends in how our digital collections (and our shiny new system) have been used in the past year. This post focuses on “referrers,” or, those other sites that people come from that directly lead them to land on our pages.
OK, so what are we counting?
- Any referrals from outside of Duke Libraries websites that resulted in a Page View anywhere in library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/*, including our digital collections homepage, individual collection homepages, contextual info pages, item pages, or search results.
How many?
- 890,000 referrals from 10,000 unique external domains (all Duke library web sites/pages excluded). Only the top 9 individually account for more than 1% of external referrals, so there’s quite a long tail.
Notable External Referrers
Of the 10,000, some stand out in particular…
(more…)
