# Presentation: 000319

## Site Evaluation

- Dr. Mark Rodekohr
- Energy Information Administration
- January 2000

## Overview

- Introduction
- Log File Analysis
- Using Customer Feedback
- Cognitive Web Site Testing

## Introduction

- There is a wealth of information available from your web logs, customer comments and customer testing that can and should be used to evaluate and improve the functionality of your web site.
- All relatively large web sites are difficult to navigate, using the available information can improve the ease of navigation.
- As many studies have shown people will not spend much time on a site if they cannot find what they are looking for quickly they will leave.

## Web Logs

## Typical Log Entry

- 206.246.87.67 - - [18/Jan/2000:15:20:31 -0500] "GET /cneaf/electricity/page/images2/overview_on.gif HTTP/1.1" 200 1478 "http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/page/data.html" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows 98)"

## What the Log Tells You

- On Jan 18 at 3:20pm user 206.246.87.67 download a gif file that was part of a electricity page
- The download worked I.e. the http 200 code
- The file was 1478 bytes
- They were using Internet explorer 5.01
- They were running Windows 98
- 206.246.87.67 is addr67.pechan.com who happens to be a contractor

## Review Your Error Logs

- [18/Jan/2000:15:42:44] warning ( 7615): for host 207.220.183.166 trying to GET /emeu/sep/ga/cosnum/eu.txt, send-file reports: can't find /Info1/www/emeu/sep/ga/cosnum/eu.txt (No such file or directory)

## Log Analysis 1

- Number of Hits for home page **179**
- Total No. of Successful Hits **265969**
- Total No. of User Sessions **9666**
- User Sessions from (United States) **0%**
- International User Sessions **0%**
- Origin Unknown User Sessions **100%**
- Average Hits per Day **265969**
- Average User Sessions per Day **9666**
- Average User Session Length **00:15:16**

## Log Analysis 2

## Top Entry Pages

## Single Access

## Most Downloads

## Most Active Organizations

## Who Are These Organizations

- 209.63.3.238 was some ISP I never heard of could be run by AOL
- 198.232.250.251 belongs to Westat a survey design and analysis company
- 192.152.140.9 belongs to Enron the natural gas company

## Referring Sites

## Spiders

## Detailed Results by Product

## Detailed Results by Subproduct

## Customer Feedback

## Sample Comments I

- 12/13/99 20:5:21 | Paul | Little_rubs | academic | best | no | yes | You provided me with great info on how we have a problem with energy consumption, but I would like to get some soultions you may have for the future, and if you did then please make them easier for a pearson like me to find
- .....@concentric.netFYI, "This Week at EIA" is a good idea. Good for your customers, and good for EIA. The fact that it lists the new issues of monthly pubs is useful, as is the announcement of one-time pubs that a user might not know about
- .......lehn@maui.netEIA: I'm a high school teacher and all I want is the energy in the USA by economic sector in the latest year you have data for. But your system is so slow and so user unfriendly it is a real pain.

## Sample Comments II

- 10/15/99 1:7:6 ........@yahoo.com | selectone | worst | no | some | needs info on australia.
- 10/28/99 12:18:45 ...... @tmcc.edu | library | better | yes | yes | Thanks for a FANTASTIC site! The data here is great. One thing I missed was energy use before 1949
- .......@infovia.com.gt (re. CABs) how about one from Guatemala we will be having elections for president this month best regards, Felix

## Example of Using Feedback

- When are web site was started we used to get several questions per day relating to finding energy price data.  Users reported having a very hard time finding it.
- We created the energy prices shown in the next slide and questions quickly fell.

## Energy Price Page

## Cognitive Testing: What is it?

- In this type of testing you take some customers (not staff), ask them a series of questions about information that is on your web site then:
- See if they find the correct answers
- Review how they found these answers
- Sometime video tapes and even keystrokes are used to recreate their every move.

## Questions Asked in a Recent Test of the EIA Site

- How much electricity was used by U.S. households in 1997?
- What is the forecast for unleaded regular gasoline prices for summer 1999?
- How much oil did Saudi Arabia produce in 1998?

- What percentage of oil used in the U.S. in 1997 was imported?
- How much gasoline was used in Massachusetts in December 1998?
- How much did gasoline cost in 1969?

## Results of Testing

## Summary from Session IV

- We reviewed what is contained in a typical web server log file
- We used Web Trends to perform an analysis of these data and reviewed the results
- We examined some other techniques that can be used to improve the usefulness of a web site.

## Summary from Session I

- At this point we have:
- Identified the purpose of the site and the user community
- Reviewed usability studies and what they have found with regard to page and site design
- Developed a file structure
- Have chosen the hardware, software and vendor
- Now we are ready to start site construction

## Summary from Session II

- We created two sites using different tools and noted the advantages and disadvantages.
- The sites we created were generally consistent with the standards we discussed in the previous session.
- We quickly reviewed the need for your own standards.
- We reviewed some more advanced issues including the addition of search engines and the improved navigation through the use of Java.

## Summary from Session III

- We reviewed the file characteristics with regard to owners/groups/permissions to illustrate why site management is so expensive.
- We looked at security issues including recent events and discussed the various risks.
- We discussed some tools that can be used to monitor your web site for security problems.

## Summary from Session III (continued)

- While this presentation has been fairly technical it illustrates some of the problems associated with maintaining a web site.  It also illustrates the reason for using a ISP if you have a fairly small site as they are responsible for dealing with these technical issues.

## Thank you for your patience.