Examining Users on News Provider Web Sites: A Review of Methodology
Journal of Usability Studies, Volume 3, Issue 3, May 2008, pp. 129-148
Abstract
This project implemented and reviewed several methods to collect data about users' information seeking behavior on news provider Web sites. While browsing news sites, participants exhibited a tendency toward a breadth-first search approach where they used the home page or a search results page as a hub to which they returned and then linked to other pages. Generally, they browsed before using search. Information seeking patterns were consistent within-user but varied somewhat across users. Most behaviors were characterized as visually scanning with users spending much time scrolling.
The methods used to identify information seeking behavior: (a) information seeking trails, (b) interaction variance, (c) Web pages recurrence, (d) URL frequency, (e) browse behavior identification, and (f) sequence analysis appear particularly useful for detailed analysis of browsing behavior. They afforded information about browsing directionality, complexity, and temporal order. A profile of user browsing behaviors was outlined in the project.
Practitioner's Take Away
The analysis of information seeking behaviors yielded valuable data in several ways:
- Unlike other research, participants were found to engage in a considerable amount of scrolling. On news sites, users scrolled beyond the fold.
- Despite Web experience, browsers of news sites exhibited a breadth-first search approach.
- User first inclination was to browse rather than search regardless of task (directed or semi-directed) so news site should accommodate browsing.
- Behavior identification defined some common behaviors (see Table 4) that users perform while seeking information on news provider sites. With additional research, it is plausible that this method may provide a profile of user information seeking patterns on news sites.
- Behavior identification and sequence analysis provided data about information seeking behaviors and their sequence. For instance, upon entering news Web sites, users appear to make a brief initial overall visual scan of the page often followed by scrolling. They used the cursor purposefully to scan hyperlinks and when doing so the likelihood of a page change was high. When users scrolled up, the likelihood of a visual scan of text decreased and they were likely to move off the page.
- The multiple methods describe in this paper provide useful means for observing behaviors on news Web sites.
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Examining Users on News Provider Web Sites: A Review of Methodology