Comments on: Where’s the Love?

By: Trending Upward | Frustrating Conversations - We Don't Need Web Analytics

Trending Upward | Frustrating Conversations - We Don't Need Web Analytics — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 22:06:49 +0000

[...] you make your design changes, how do you know it worked? Making sure your website is useful is a never-ending task. Your content changes constantly, right? Then how do you know it’s continuing to be useful [...]

By: Guru Interviews: Shelby Thayer, Penn State University | .eduGuru

Guru Interviews: Shelby Thayer, Penn State University | .eduGuru — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 14:29:13 +0000

[...] an application. Or arriving at the correct journal article when you search. That’s why usability and WA are so intermingled. You can’t have one without the other. I’m trying to get higher ed peeps to see it as [...]

By: drew

drew — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 19:51:37 +0000

Shelby you’ve got me on the baseball analogy. And Tonya said Kyle’s presentation was really great. I just wish I had more time to devote to this stuff. One of the big reasons why I like be a designer has to do with instant accountability. People can judge a designer’s performance by his portfolio in mere seconds. And I dig that, because I’ve never been good at selling myself. Analytics, are great in that way too. The numbers force us to be accountable. The numbers help win arguments. The numbers help justify great content and establish PRIORITIES of content.

But in the end, the numbers only excite me to a certain point. And my threshold is quite a bit lower than normal.

By: Shelby Thayer

Shelby Thayer — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 04:23:54 +0000

Congrats, Kyle. As I mentioned on your blog, I was following the conference on Twitter and you were getting rave reviews. Thanks for publishing the slides. I noticed the time on page/site slides. Awesome. I’ve been wanting to do a post about that for a while.

Thanks for your comment here. I completely agree with you. I think the problem with the “content and design” are more important thinking is that as soon as you give into that thinking and not give the same amount of effort to user testing, analytics, and such, that’s the moment you start to ignore it. If we all said, “I’ll get to it when I have time,” we’d never get to it.

That’s why my motto is not more important, but as important. I’m afraid after this post, however, I will have to add that phrase to the banned word list.

By: Kyle James

Kyle James — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:05:57 +0000

So my Web Analytics won best in track… so people obviously care about it… How’s that for some analytical data (user reviews) put together to prove my point.

Anyway here is my argument in a nutshell. If you aren’t looking at your analytics then your storytelling and great content is probably not being as effective as it could be. If you are making your request information page amazing, but it is only getting 10 visits a month while your schedule a visit still looks horrible but has 10,000 visits a month then your WASTING YOUR EFFORT!

You have no way of knowing this sort of thing without the analytics.