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Take this brief quiz and make a mental note of your responses:

1. Have you and your boss (or client) agreed on the important metrics for your website’s success?

That’s it. If the answer is yes, you’re on the road to being an analytics superhero. But if you don’t know the answer to that question, all of your analytics efforts are in vain.

Nikki Massaro Kauffman is a smart web marketer (and a daring thief of table skirts). She recently wrote about problems with data collection for eduGuru:

“Tools help you do the job, but they don’t do it for you. They require expertise. Do you even know what information you want to get from the application in the first place? Do you know enough about the data you are collecting to know how to get what you want from the tools? Do you know how to use the tools?”

“Reporting is not Analysis”

Avinash Kaushik has famously said that reporting is not the same as analysis. I believe this is because people mistake tools for intelligence. Just as a programmer is useless unless he has a project, reports are useless unless they are answering a question.

Too often are we asked to provide answers to unstated questions. The result, as Nikki asks, is whether we can read the minds of our bosses and clients about exactly what they’re trying to accomplish.

Analysis is about business intelligence. Web analytics software is supposed to help you make informed decisions. It starts with deciding what you’re trying to measure and how to measure it.

Fortunately, it can be easy to start (and gets harder the deeper you go). Begin by talking with your boss briefly about what you both consider success to be for your website, and then what you both consider the most important thing someone can do on your website. If you’re lucky, it’s as simple as a conversion goal – a checkout process, a signup, or a form. If not, look for ways to measure whatever task you have. Michael Notte has a great resource for defining your web metrics and KPIs.

This is the first step to moving beyond reporting and into analysis. And just as Mr. Incredible had to work out to regain his crime-fighting figure, you’ll need to practice and develop your skills. You’re on the road to becoming an analytics superhero.

In software, an API is a way to get data into or out of a system. It stands for “Applicant Programming Interface” and basically allows outsiders to access or manipulate the information in the software.

The Twitter API lets you access tweets, search users, post tweets, and so on. The API enables apps like TweetDeck, Twitterrific, and all those Twitter-related web apps to exist. The Google Maps API is the engine behind thousands of maps mashups.

APIs Everywhere

One of the most frustrating things to a software developer is reinventing the wheel. They even have an acronym – DRY: don’t repeat yourself. So when you’re building software that needs to pull in campus events, you should hit the API for the campus calendar and grab what you need. Want to show YouTube videos in the search results? Use the API.

Just as frustrating is finding the substandard add-ons that often come with large software packages. Just because a web content management system has a CRM (constituent relationship management) doesn’t mean it’s a good CRM. So it sends HTML emails? Is it as good as the standalone systems? You pour all of your wisdom into selecting a great software package and you often end up with poor add-ons that don’t meet your needs.

This is where APIs can come in handy. If you can get the systems to integrate via their respective APIs, you can get the best of both worlds. And if they’re popular systems, they may even build such integrations right in (like LinkedIn showing your latest Slideshare presentations).

Human APIs

Higher education institutions are notorious for being collections of silos. But some brilliant folks recognize the value in networking across their institutions, serving as connectors, and sharing information. These are Human APIs. Sometimes they’re called Connectors or Trust Agents Zero. They build make themselves available, build relationships, and share information freely. In exchange, they are able to create more value through collaborations.

Meetups and User Groups

One way to start is to form a user group of professionals around a particular topic. Our team has spawned several groups, including the South Bend Ruby Group. This group led to new relationships and I eventually hired one of the members to our team.

We’ve also formed a number of internal groups on LinkedIn around various industries and topics. The outreach doesn’t take much, but it’s absolutely worth it for the chance to interface with other teams and departments, share knowledge, and build on each others’ efforts.

Every project has its ups and downs. Sometimes it’s pretty predictable. This bingo kit is for any web project manager, designer, developer, writer, freelancer, or anyone else who works on website projects.

Rules

Pick a project, any project. Each team member gets a card (reload to refresh the card). As the project goes on, mark off each box as it applies. The first team member to get five across, up, or in a diagonal wins (or loses, depending on how you look at it).

Sorry, there are no free spaces in Web Project Bingo. The middle is reserved for sites that actually launch.

Get Your Own!

Download Web Project Bingo (PDF) …or download the Excel file to print your own. (To randomize the card again, go to the second worksheet and sort by column A.)

In pushing social media on campus (including an institutional blogging platform to hold personal/professional blogs), the question arises: Who owns this content?

I want to explore a few scenarios. Please post to the comments and share your own opinions on these.

1. You post to your personal blog on company time, using a company computer.

On one hand, it’s your personal blog – so it’s unlikely to be an issue because your employer probably doesn’t care about it. But if it’s related to your work and may provide value, the company might care. And the “during company time on company equipment” thing seems to lean toward your employer.

2. You tweet during work hours.

Who doesn’t do this? Do your personal tweets become the company’s property? Again, kind of a moot point given that the employer likely doesn’t care.

3. You post to a personal blog on an institutional platform, regardless of time or equipment.

This depends on the policies of the institution. Institutional blogs are likely to be the company’s property, but personal blogs using the employer’s systems seem like a grey area.

During Work Hours

This is the part that really bothers me. Every night, I do work for my employer. My work hours don’t stop at 5pm simply because the banks close – I’m on email, IM, and often do work because it needs to be done. How do you define “work hours?” What about those increasingly rare days when I work from home?

My perspective (which likely conflicts with that of my employer) is that my job isn’t defined by work hours. It’s defined by meeting the requirements of the position – with a somewhat elastic goal of 40 hours. Realistically, I spend far more than that to get the job done. My presence in the office from 8-5 doesn’t mean the job’s getting done, and my absence doesn’t mean that it’s not.

As a result, it is common for those of us in this situation to take a long lunch, exercise, or leave early. In exchange for pushing our “work hours” outside of 8-5, we expect flexibility during the 8-5 workday. So how does this affect our participation in social media? If I spend 30 minutes blogging during the day, but 30 minutes working at night – is this an even trade?

I’m curious to hear what you think. Have you ever had a “that’s our property” issue with your employer?

Note: This is hypothetical and theoretical. I don’t have any specific issue I’m dealing with at this time. Oh yeah, this post was written during work hours. * gasp *

This week I presented to our team at AgencyND about Mobile – what’s the deal and what’s coming. I call this the Mobile Horizon, as a nod to the Horizon Report which aims to inform higher education about the future technologies and their implications. Mobile is all the rage, and for good reason. View the presentation to learn why.

I recently looked at using Ning to power a private social network, but one little red flag was a deal-breaker. From the Terms of Service:

You hereby grant Ning, during the course of your usage of the Ning Platform, a nonexclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, sublicenseable and transferable right and license to (i) use, reproduce, create derivative works of, distribute, publicly perform and publicly display Your Content (a) for the sole purpose of operating and making Your Content available on the Ning Platform and in all current and future media in which the Ning Platform may now or hereafter be distributed or transmitted or (b) for our internal business purposes; and (ii) disclose metrics regarding Your Content on an aggregated basis for advertising, marketing and business development purposes.

Whoa! So anything you post to Ning is theirs to use as they wish, for as long as they wish? Oddly, Ning opens this section with the line: “Ning does not claim any ownership rights in Your Content.” And then it proceeds to trample that a bunch of ridiculous policies that amount to practically owning your content.

So What?

If you’re just talking about users and their message posts, that’s something you might get over. But what about using this as your own branded network? What about placing your logo or copyrighted imagery in there? In short, Ning would be able to use your logo without your permission. I don’t know about your school, but my employer has a department dedicated to licensing – we don’t let just anyone throw our mark around.

It looks like we’re not the only ones who noticed this, either. Duke University’s Duke Digital Initiative website is built in Ning, and it doesn’t have any official Duke mark or photography.

So what should you do?

If you really want to use Ning, you can either give in and just not worry about the implications of giving up some of your rights. Maybe it doesn’t matter – but if you care about your mark, photography, or other content you might need to design around it. You could build a theme that doesn’t incorporate any of these elements. This is exactly what Duke did, but I find it’s still a little unusual, and unnecessarily limiting.

You could also use any number of other white label social networking platforms to accomplish the same kind of thing. Is this the right thing to do? It depends on your needs.

Maybe white label isn’t that important: one could also point out that the 300+ million users on Facebook don’t already have accounts to your private social network.

I’ve written and spoken on website usability testing plenty of times. But recently, our team at Notre Dame has begun to seriously investigate other methods, tools, and concepts to improve every part of our projects.

Special thanks to Kate Russell, our information architect and usability coordinator, who has uncovered a wealth of tools and is helping create an entirely new process around one of the biggest weaknesses for so many websites.

Methods and Tools

Let’s start with the specific testing methods you might employ throughout a project.

Gut Reaction/5 second test

Quick–what’s the purpose of this site? Take five seconds to look at a site and list the things you noticed about it. This is something of a free association exercise, but it’s useful for evaluating the overall impact of a site without getting into a ton of detail. You don’t need a fancy tool to do this, but since there is one (and it’s free and easy to use) you might consider it.

Card Sorting

A card sort asks the test subject to help you organize the site in a way that makes sense to him or her. This is a formative or summative type of test, allowing users to help create the solution rather than simply validate the solution you have provided. A card sort can be performed with index cards (print the name of each page on a card) or with specialized software.

Information Architecture (IA) Testing

This type of test uses the same kinds of tasks, but examines it within the context of an information architecture or sitemap. IA testing can be done using an outline, flowchart, index cards, or specialized tools.

Task Testing

Identify common user actions and ask the test subject to do them. These can be phrased as a story:

You are interested in getting updates from this blog when there are new posts. How might you do this?

Task testing can be applied at many different stages in a project, but is most useful when done on a mockup or a working prototype of the website. Too early (wireframes, grayscale mockups) and it’s hard for users to imagine interacting with it, or too late and it’s tough to fix deep-rooted critical mistakes.

Voyeur Analytics

I call these tools “voyeur” tools because they let you watch actual users interacting with your website. These track the mouse movements and clicks of individual users. I’m not sure what the right name is for this one, but it’s a neat idea. It does bring up some privacy questions, but that will play differently depending on your organization and the tools you use.

Analytics, Measurement, and Surveys

Once a site is live, there are any number of analytics and surveys you can use. This goes beyond the scope of “testing,” per se, but it’s a valuable part of evaluating the site’s success. Look beyond traditional stats packages (Google Analytics, WebTrends, etc.) and consider Heatmaps (CrazyEgg or ClickHeat), A/B testing such as Google Website Optimizer and surveys or site feedback tools such as UserVoice.com.

When to Test

When do you test? Test early, test often. Don’t wait until the end, or it’s too late to test.

Download this graphic (PDF)

Before You Begin

What to Test: Current website, competitor websites.
Methods: Task tests, IA testing
Tools: Silverback, TreeJack, Chalkmark

Creating a Site Organization

What to Test: Proposed sitemap or collection of
Methods: Card sort
Tools: websort.net, OptimalSort

Testing the New Site Organization

What to Test: Proposed sitemap
Methods: IA testing
Tools: TreeJack

Initial Layout – Wireframe/Paper Prototype/Mockup

What to Test: Wireframe/Paper Prototype
Methods: Task testing, gut reaction
Tools: Silverback, Chalkmark, fivesecondtest.com

Full-blown Mockups

What to Test: Flattened files
Methods: Task testing, gut reaction
Tools: Silverback, Chalkmark, fivesecondtest.com

A Working Site (templates and content)

What to Test: The development or pre-production website.
Methods: Task testing
Tools: Silverback

The Website is Live!

What to Test: The live website.
Methods: Analytics, surveys, voyeur analytics
Tools: Web analytics software (Google Analytics, StatCounter, WebTrends, etc.), Userfly

Where to Learn More about Usability Testing

• My Usability Bookmarks
• All Usability Bookmarks
• Usability.gov
• Jakob Nielsen
• Steve Krug

From July 20-22, 2009 I attended (and presented at) eduWEB Conference 2009. Go check out my presentation slides on Budget Usability Testing.

Things I Noticed

There’s a wide spectrum of experience, beginner to expert. Some sessions are designed more for one or the other, and it’s not always clear until you’re in the session.

There’s a healthy mix of tech, design, marketing specialists and others. It makes for diverse discussions and perspectives, which I loved.

There are 487 different organizational structures: central vs. silo, IT vs. marketing, one-man-shop vs. large teams, and everything in between.

There are different challenges for each organization. Some are purely concerned with increasing applicants, while others are focused on changing the nature of the applicants, engaging alumni, or even retaining students. You have to think hard about how each lesson can be applied to your individual situation.

There’s a backchannel of activity on Twitter during the entire conference, often adding commentary. This was scary as hell while I was presenting, but immensely valuable to the participants.

A central theme of many conversations was to ask forgiveness later. This is a fast-moving industry and you can’t afford for a committee to kill your ideas just because they can’t keep up.

Things I’m Excited About

Facebook Connect for single sign-on. I want to look into using this to help our Alumni Association overcome authentication issues. We have our own internal website, and I can never remember my login. So I don’t use it.

Integrating social media with sites, promoting it to people, connecting social media participants across networks. You can’t just be on social networks, you have to drive people to them.

Mobile is going to blow up. There were lots of mentions in the sessions, but not a lot of dedicated time on mobile use. As far as I can tell, there’s not a ton of real investment in this area, but from watching other participants almost everyone had their phones out for mobile web or Twitter texting at some point.

My Favorite Part of eduWEB 2009

Meeting online friends in real life… instant connections, credibility, and relationships. I also met a ton of people in person and then immediately started following them online – adding a new dimension to the usual networking atmosphere. This is the social part of social media, and it’s fantastic.