Web Analytics Strategies For Information Professionals

Investing time in customizing your settings in Google Analytics helps you get the most out of the detailed data it offers, particularly if your library’s web presence spans multiple platforms.

This informative and practical book teaches how to get better and faster results from Internet searches and methods for maximizing the potential of the world's most popular search engine. Mastering Internet research skills is a must for today's information professionals and LIS students, as well as for educators and all high school and college students. But without specific instruction in how to conduct online research, people are destined to waste time in their Internet queries or to come up emptyhanded when the information they're seeking is, in fact, available. Harnessing the Power of Google: What Every Researcher Should Know offers simple strategies that streamline research and improve anyone's search results. It will specifically benefit information professionals, students, and academic researchers in disciplines like international studies, political science, and statistical research. Illustrated with helpful screen shots, this handbook will be an often-consulted desk reference and can serve as a workshop guide or supplementary reading in courses on online research skills. The book starts with a review of general guidelines for searching that covers topics like the difference between primary and secondary sources, determining authority, citing sources, indexing, and ranking before addressing Google's power-searching features, such as the ability to search by top-level Internet domain or file type. The book describes the history of information access over the past century, culminating in today's digital information archives and how Google now augments—not replaces—what libraries provide. The three Google interfaces that together comprise a powerful toolkit are covered in detail: Google Web for finding primary source materials; Google Scholar for full text searching of scholarly, peer-reviewed material; and Google Books for searching the full text of a very high percentage of books.

Are you getting your money’s worth out of Google Analytics? Investing time in customizing your settings in Google Analytics helps you get the most out of the detailed data it offers, particularly if your library’s web presence spans multiple platforms. In this issue of Library Technology Reports, experienced trainers Farney and McHale point you to the high-payoff priorities, with specific advice on such topics as How to implement Google Analytics in common content management systems, OPACs, discovery layers, and institutional repositories Cross-domain tracking, including guidance on when and how to combine or separate data across multiple domains or subdomains Identifying your website’s purpose and using Goal Reports to measure results Using filters to exclude activity by library staff from your data Using event tracking to get data on use of PDFs, video player widgets, and other non-HTML objects Sample easy-to-implement HTML code is included in this issue, making it even more valuable.

Tracking the library user's journey is no simple task in the digital world; users can often navigate through a series of different websites, including library websites, discovery tools, link resolvers, and more just to view a single journal article. Your library collects massive amounts of data related to this journey—probably more than you realize, and almost certainly more than you analyze. Too often library analytic programs simplify data into basic units of measurements that miss useful insights. Here, data expert Farney shows you how to maximize your efforts: you’ll learn how to improve your data collection, clean your data, and combine different data sources. Teaching you how to identify and analyze areas that fit your library’s priorities, this book covers case studies of library projects with digital analytics;ways to use email campaign data from MailChimp or ConstantContact;how to measure click-through rates from unavailable items in the catalog to the ILL module;getting data from search tools such as library catalogs, journal search portals, link resolvers, and digital repositories;using COUNTER compliant data from your electronic resources;techniques for using Google Tag Manager for custom metrics and dimensions;descriptions of analytics tools ranging from library analytics tools like Springshare’s LibInsights and Orangeboy’s Savannah to more focused web analytics tools like Google Analytics, Piwik, and Woopra; anddata visualization tools like Tableau or Google Data Studio. Focusing on digital analytics principles and concepts, this book walks you through the many tools available, including step-by-step examples for typical library needs.

This lecture presents an overview of the Web analytics process, with a focus on providing insight and actionable outcomes from collecting and analyzing Internet data. The lecture first provides an overview of Web analytics, providing in essence, a condensed version of the entire lecture. The lecture then outlines the theoretical and methodological foundations of Web analytics in order to make obvious the strengths and shortcomings of Web analytics as an approach. These foundational elements include the psychological basis in behaviorism and methodological underpinning of trace data as an empirical method. These foundational elements are illuminated further through a brief history of Web analytics from the original transaction log studies in the 1960s through the information science investigations of library systems to the focus on Websites, systems, and applications. Following a discussion of on-going interaction data within the clickstream created using log files and page tagging for analytics of Website and search logs, the lecture then presents a Web analytic process to convert these basic data to meaningful key performance indicators in order to measure likely converts that are tailored to the organizational goals or potential opportunities. Supplementary data collection techniques are addressed, including surveys and laboratory studies. The overall goal of this lecture is to provide implementable information and a methodology for understanding Web analytics in order to improve Web systems, increase customer satisfaction, and target revenue through effective analysis of user-Website interactions. Table of Contents: Understanding Web Analytics / The Foundations of Web Analytics: Theory and Methods / The History of Web Analytics / Data Collection for Web Analytics / Web Analytics Fundamentals / Web Analytics Strategy / Web Analytics as Competitive Intelligence / Supplementary Methods for Augmenting Web Analytics / Search Log Analytics / Conclusion / Key Terms / Blogs for Further Reading / References

This comprehensive primer introduces information technology topics foundational to many services offered in today’s libraries and information centers. Written by a librarian, it clearly explains concepts familiar to the I.T. professional with an eye toward practical applications in libraries for the aspiring technologist. Chapters begin with a basic introduction to a major topic then go into enough technical detail of relevant technologies to be useful to the student preparing for library technology and systems work or the professional needing to converse effectively with technology experts. Many chapters also present current issues or trends for the subject matter being discussed. The twelve chapters cover major topics such as technology support, computer hardware, networking, server administration, information security, web development, software and systems development, emerging technology, library management technologies, and technology planning. Each chapter also includes a set of pedagogical features for use with instruction including: Chapter summary List of key terms End of chapter question set Suggested activities Bibliography for further reading List of web resources Those who will find this book useful include library & information science students, librarians new to systems or information technology responsibilities, and library managers desiring a primer on information technology.