The future of web analytics:Inferring User Intent from Session Replays

Dustin Chambers & Dick HorstUserWorks inc.

Time Technology Visualization Theory $

1994 Server Logs Raw data What are people doing? Looking at?

Web Counter Traffic count How many visitors?

1996

1998 Web Log Analysis Graphs & Charts Trend $200 M

ROI (marketing)

2000 Dashboard display Ease of monitoring

Page Tagging (JavaScript) Validity

2002 Dashboard display

KPI's $350 M

2004 Page overlay Web Analytics 2.0

X & Y Page overlay Applied context

2006 Heatmaps

2008 X&Y/time Session replay Behavioral analysis

$930 M

2010 Integrated triangulation

IFT? $1 Billion+

First source of web use data

86.42.132.114 - - [31/Oct/2005:18:15:16 -0500] "GET /styles/style.css HTTP/1.1" 200 5194 "http://www.example.com/links/links.php?cat=css" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050915 Firefox/1.0.7"

Early attempts to visualize data

Dashboard

Page tagging

Google Analytics

-Google Analytics

Heat Maps

Page Overlay

-CrazyEgg

Hover Map

Session replay e.g.

Providers? Cost?

RobotReplay – Freewww.robotreplay.com

ClickTale – Free - $99/monthwww.clicktale.com

TeaLeaf - $20,000+www.tealeaf.com

How is this any better?

How do we use it?

Alternative to eye-tracking?

“The data suggest that there is a very strong relationship between gaze position and cursor position.”

“This implies that we can use an inexpensive and extremely popular tool as an alternative of eye-tracking systems, especially in web usability systems.”

-Carnegie Mellon, 2001

Information Foraging Theory

“What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”

-Herb Simon (Nobel Prize Winner)

Consider the anecdotal evidence

• “Just by looking at the way a mouse moves, I can tell whether you are reading a webpage or not.” “I can tell because when you read a webpage, you do one of two things. You either shove the mouse off to the right so it is out of the way, or you will walk down the page with your mouse.”– Dr. Ted Selker, MIT Media Lab

Ambiguity

“Slow and arched trajectories as users move their mouse would indicate an ambiguous state of mind.”

-MIT Media Lab

Are you experienced?

“People are extremely good at remembering graphic design. So when you act like you know where you are going on a place where you have no reason to know, then we know you have been there before.”– Dr. Ted Selker, MIT Media Lab

Web Analytics 2.0

-Avinash Kaushik

Web Analytics 2.0

• Apply Context• Segment• Triangulate/Validate

ExamplesInferring user intent using the latest web analytic technology with the latest theory

What’s next?Bleeding-edge technology

Future Implications…

Integrated Triangulation

Surveys– Why are you here?– Where you able to complete?– Why not?– How satisfied?

Unmoderated remote usability testing

Enhanced Segmentation

Filter by:– Task completion– Satisfaction rating– User intent– Problem encountered– Time on task– Search term

Thanks for listening!

Dustin Chambersdchambers@userworks.com

Dr. Dick Horstdhorst@userworks.com