forward: understanding users’ searching habits to improve discovery
DESCRIPTION
The Shared Development Group investigated how users searched the Forward catalog, and David Lee explains how, what tools were used, the trends identified, and areas the SDG would like to improve based on what they learned.TRANSCRIPT
ForwardUW Madison catalog usage, tools, and plans.
How our catalog is used
Tools we use
Improvements
Catalog Usage
Pages 7%
Bots 69%
Assets 10%
Status 14%
Page Views
64% of traffic is from out of state
66% of the items are discovered
outside of the catalog
Finding an item locally
Anywhere
Advanced
Title
Author
Subject
For the remaining 34%
Anywhere SearchID
10%
Author 67%
Known Item 4%
Title 12%
Topic 8%
Advanced Search
• Most traffic is from “canned” searches
• The advanced form makes up only 0.6% of traffic
Subject Explore
• Clicked about 4% of the time
Subject Browse
• Topics and Places, about 3% of overall traffic
Author Browse
• 0.3% of traffic
Language Browse
• 0.3% of traffic
Spelling
• Used 15% of the time
• Yahoo @ $15 / month versus Bing @ $500 / month
Trends
• Increase in keyword anywhere searching
• Increase in outside traffic
• Increase in bot traffic
• Decrease in search referral traffic
Tools
Google Analytics
Inspectlet - heatmaps
Inspectlet - sessions
New Relic
New Relic
Collectd
Log parsing
Search Classification
Improvements
Improve Google Indexing
• Generate a sitemap to allow better indexing
• Utilize Google’s webmaster tools site
• Leverage microdata
Search detection
• Classification of BibID searches
• Classify known item searches
• Tailor responses based on search classification
Backend
• Page load and query times are seven times faster
• Further improve outlier performance
• Better metrics for external calls
Core Features
• Primo Central
• Alma
• Improved account management
• Provide API