Case Study

Client:

English Nature, a government-funded body whose purpose is to promote the conservation of England’s wildlife and natural features. This project was focused on the English Nature web site at http://www.english-nature.org.uk.

Challenge:

The specific objective of the project was to develop an understanding of the ways in which the English Nature web site is used by visitors. In common with many organisations, English Nature had a feel for the activity taking place on their site through a standard statistical package, but were not able to interpret these figures into meaningful usability conclusions.

A number of site areas were identified as being of particular interest to English Nature. These were singled out for special examination with the aim of understanding precisely how visitors were using these pages:

• Home page
• Maps
• National Nature Reserves
• Species search
• General site search
• Corporate Governance downloads
• Jobs

Market overview:

English Nature was planning a complete redevelopment of the web site. In order to specify the requirements of the new site comprehensively, it was felt that the way in which the existing site was used needed to be better understood.

It was crucial to place this study in the overall context of a value-driven, publicly-financed organisation. The web site was originally designed to provide a service to visitors and raise awareness not just of the role and activities of English Nature but also of natural heritage, environmental and biodiversity issues. It was imperative that the study identified areas for improvement to allow English Nature not only to fulfil these needs through the web site but also to plan future technology investments in this area.

Solution:

IS Solutions employed speed-trap Prophet web site analytics in this project. The technology behind speed-trap Prophet enables a fuller picture of activity to be identified than has been possible before through rival web analytics packages or through interpersonal methods like focus groups.

At the project initiation, the background to the study was discussed with the client and an analysis performed on the client-specific objectives. An overall view of the client’s requirements was formed, and the methods by which a speed-trap Prophet usability study could provide answers was examined, through open discussion and with reference to the web site.

Following this initiation, the requirements were documented and IS Solutions liaised with English Nature’s web agency to ensure that the site was correctly instrumented for data collection using speed-trap Prophet. The collection server was then set up to collect data according to the requirements agreed with English Nature.

Usage information was collected for a period of 30 days. Once this was complete, speed-trap Prophet analysis tools were used to understand customer behaviour and gather the statistics that would precisely answer questions about site usage.

For example, it was determined through the study that the use of maps on the site was confusing, with many users clicking in error on non-clickable maps. Other key findings included the fact that 18% of user sessions involved a visit to the jobs page and that a total of 9% of users searched for jobs or vacancies on the site.

The study also allowed the formation of relationships between the number of visits to National Nature Reserve pages with features of the reserve, including whether it was designated a spotlight reserve, had disabled access or was listed “above the fold” (within the viewable area) in the user browser.

The information that was gathered was relayed to English Nature in a comprehensive presentation to department heads. This was reinforced with a thorough report that included analysis and key facts and figures, screenshots, click maps and other visual representations of user activity.

It is anticipated that another usability study will take place when the redesigned site is available as a means of validating changes made to the site following the initial study.

Key Technologies:

• speed-trap Prophet Collection Server, Client Side Adapter and Workbench Analyser.
• Sun Solaris 8 platform.

Key Activities:

This project involved skills from across IS Solutions range of disciplines:

• Business analysts in defining and documenting precise requirements at the outset of the project.
• Information architects in the analysis of data collected during the study with interface design experts also employed in support of this function.
• Development resources in the setup and configuration of the collection server according to the specific needs of the client.
• Project management.
• Support personnel in maintaining availability and performance of the collection server.