A New Approach to Gathering User Experience Data

Keeping in mind the constraints about the group of users you plan to study and the kind of data you need to collect, the next challenge is selecting the right methodology.

The desire for large, unbiased, representative samples suggests using automated methods such as log file analysis. However, the need for rich, contextually sensitive session data suggests usability lab testing. Thus, there is a dilemma of quantity versus quality: log files generate a larger quantity of data, whereas usability labs generate much richer data. Furthermore, each of these methods can produce serious flaws in its area of strength when used inappropriately or inconsistently by different researchers. The solution is in the middle where the two ends of the spectrum meet.

New data collection methods can help usability researchers capture large amounts of user experience data while monitoring website. These solutions combine the best of both approaches with marginal sacrifices. The result is a more robust and standardized process to conduct consistent, reliable, actionable usability research.

Keynote WebEffective™ was developed to automate usability data collection and to strike the right balance between quantity of data collected and the quality of that data. As with other Keynote performance management solutions, WebEffective is deployed as a service using a network of servers positioned
between actual site visitors and Web site servers. for analysis. By redirecting visitors to your Web site through Keynote servers, WebEffective can maintain its position unobtrusively monitoring
and recording user interaction. WebEffective is able to see and capture all HTML content downloaded to the users’ computer as well as all the upstream data requests sent to the Web server. WebEffective then reconstructs the data streams into actual visitor sessions

Related Posts:

1. Monitoring User Experience of the Cloud  2. How to gain actionable data to demand better performance? 3. Website Availability Monitoring From End User's Perspective

Measuring site performance over an actual cellular network

As fundamental as it may seem, many site owners don’t alter their approach at all when tackling a mobile site project. Call it “desktop thinking,” or terrestrial, landline, wireline thinking — by any name, it ignores the fundamental reality of the cellular network, which as described above, is inherently slower and riddled with opportunities for performance degradation.

One common desktop tactic that causes issues in mobile is the URL redirect, which instructs the browser to follow a different URL than the one originally requested. There are a number of legitimate reasons to employ this technique — to direct users to your third-party site host; to offer nicknames that provide multiple paths to the main site; or to send users to a site designed specifically for the detected browser.

This is generally a fine practice in the desktop browser world, where redirects usually happen in the blink of an eye and are virtually undetectable to the user. Use the same technique on a mobile site, though, where the big “L” — latency — colors the entire experience, and you end up with users staring and staring at a screen where nothing’s happening.

Surprisingly, even some of the biggest retailers have mobile sites bogged down with URL redirects. The problems become apparent when measuring site performance over an actual cellular network (as opposed to a WiFi connection).

At what point does the user come to the conclusion that the site’s not working, or that it’s not worth the wait? If they’ve just navigated from a well-built mobile site that loaded quickly, there’s a good chance they’re not going to wait eight seconds. How likely is it that they’ll come back again? How likely they’ll tell their friends about the experience? Forget what that means in terms of a lost sale. What does it mean for retailer X’s brand image?

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Improve Performance Of Third-Party Components

A slick-looking Web site is ultimately of limited effectiveness if all of the its bells and whistles are an impediment to system performance. Hence, the monitoring of system performance at the end-user/UI level is extremely important to ensuring a consistently excellent user experience. By using the proper website performance tools in a targeted manner, both business managers and developers can effectively monitor the impact of third-party performance both on the individual component level and in the aggregate.

The more complex your Web site is, the more likely it is that its performance – and possibly your profit margin - is in the hands of third parties and their components running on your site. Ideally, we want to improve the performance of these third-party components (aka “widgets”), so that a page loads just as fast with these widgets as without them.

If you are the owner of the Web site, there are at least two ways to improve overall site performance. One is to optimize the Web site itself for each widget so that those widgets running on the page will be more efficient, a method that is not cost-efficient. The other, more cost-effective option is to use continuous and focused website performance monitoring. Breaking down performance by time and by component category allows you to pinpoint the components that adversely impact Web site performance. 

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Effectively Monitor The Impact Of Third-Party Performance

How third-party content can impact Web site performance and why effective targeted monitoring of third-party content and add-ons is vital to IT, Web operations managers, and business stakeholders to ensure optimal Web site performance and a good user experience.

A slick-looking Web site is ultimately of limited effectiveness if all of the its bells and whistles are an impediment to system performance. Hence, the monitoring of system performance at the end-user/UI level is extremely important to ensuring a consistently excellent user experience.

By using the proper web performance tools in a targeted manner, both business managers and developers can effectively monitor the impact of third-party performance both on the individual component level and in the aggregate.

Read More on The Benefits of Third-Party Content Monitoring and Website Monitoring Service

Improving Website Responsiveness Involves Tradeoffs

It is easy for a measurement tool to sit on a server and measure all requests for service—and this kind of measurement has its uses, especially when load testing or investigating bottlenecks. But because of the variety of implementation possibilities, a common problem when measuring RIAs is that related requests may appear to originate from separate units of work on the client.

Correlating seemingly separate measurements with a particular application activity, task, or phase is tricky. The more complex the client/server relationship, especially when it involves concurrent interactions, the harder it becomes for measurement and analysis tools to perform that correlation properly.

Having more design and implementation options also creates new opportunities for developers to make performance-related mistakes. Accidentally or deliberately, developers can implement “chatty” client/server communication styles that perform extremely slowly under some workload conditions. Even with thorough testing, some of these problems may remain undiscovered until after the application is deployed unless applications are subjected to a systematic SLM process that includes measurement
activities to identify, investigate, and fix them.

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Measuring Streaming Media Performance From The Customer Perspective

Along with the growth, however, have come significant challenges as streaming media points out to corporations and individuals the limits of their information infrastructure. These limits crash against the users’ demands for smooth video, clear audio, and performance levels specified and guaranteed by contract. Media providers seeking to provide consistent quality of service face a daunting array of web performance issues, caused by lack of last-mile broadband build-out to service interruptions and carrier quality of service problems.

One key to dealing with quality of service issues is accurately measuring streaming media website performance from the customer perspective. With the lack of industry standardization, customer confidence rests on providing information from a trusted source.