An additional Open Forum will be held on Wednesday, January 28, 2009 at 10:30 a.m. in Taylor 304 to discuss the college's departmental website redesign project.

As in the two previously scheduled Open Forums, the following topics will be on the table for discussion.

1. What do you like or dislike about your current departmental website?
2. What do you think is the most important feature that your departmental website should include?
3. Who do you think is your primary audience for your departmental website?
4. What do you think is the purpose of a departmental website?
5. What are some other websites you like? Please share some examples and explain what you like about them.  (we will be able to project site onto a screen for discussion)

It is our hope that by using an alternate location more people will be able to participate in this process.

An important part of redesigning the CISAT departmental websites will be determining:

1. Who the audience for each website is,
2. What information they are looking for,
3. and What software capabilities they have to view that information.

The quickest and easiest way to gather this type of information about website visitors is through a web statistics or web analytics program. These programs use one of two methods to track how many users visit the site, what pages they view, and even what browsers they use. Each method has it's pros and cons.

Web Server Log Analysis

One way a web analytics program can collect information on users is by reading and organizing server logs. Most web servers have the capability to record the number of visits a website receives, and possibly other information as well. The server stores that information in log files that are very difficult to read and understand. A web analytics program can automatically read through those log files, organize the information, and present it in easy to read charts, graphs and tables.

A major benefit of using a server log analytics type program is that it does not require extra code on websites to collect information. However, it is not possible to collect some potentially helpful information from users, like their browser size or Javascript capabilities, using this method.

Page Tagging

Another way web analytics programs can collect information is by using client-side script with a method called page tagging. Client-side script is code written to run in a users browser when they load a website. Javascript is most commonly used in this type of application.

The major drawback to using a page tagging form of web analytics is that it requires extra code to be placed on each and every web page that will collect information, creating extra work during development and possibly slowing page load times for the end user. However, with page tagging we can gather important information on users' browser sizes and capabilities that can dramatically influence website design and content decisions.

Choosing A Web Analytics Program

The nice thing about both types of web analytics programs is that they are not mutually exclusive, meaning there's no reason we can't use both types of programs at the same time. Of course, there are other factors that weigh into the decision of which program(s) we will ultimately use for the CISAT Departmental ReDesign Project other than those I outlined above, such as cost, program support and compatibility. We are currently in the process of reviewing several programs with the potential to meet our needs in CISAT. You can review a list of the pros and cons (PDF) for some of the programs we are considering. 

If you would like to experiment with a web analytics program yourself, both Google Analytics and StatCounter are free page tagging type programs available to the public.