2008 Web Statistics – Services (www|web)

The following data represents 2008’s summary of the most-used web applications running under our https://www.middlebury.edu and https://web.middlebury.edu websites.

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Internal (on-campus)

  1. Online Directory
  2. Online Forms – (SA PreDep)
  3. Student Ride Board

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External (off-campus)

  1. Online Directory
  2. Online Forms (Admissions, Alumni Giving, SA PreDep)
  3. Online Forms (Alumni Update)

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Combined

  1. Online Directory
  2. Online Forms (Admissions, Alumni Giving, SA PreDep)
  3. BannerWeb Scout

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Summary: The Online Directory is the most-used web application on www|web.

2008 Web Statistics – Connection Speed & Screen Resolution

The following data represents 2008’s summary of connection speed & screen resolution statistics for our http://www.middlebury.edu website.  Broadband connection speeds are considered DSL and above.

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Internal

Connection Speed: 100% – Broadband

Screen Resolution:  99% – 1024×768 or higher

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External

Connection Speed:  73% – Broadband, 24% – Unknown, 3% – Dialup

Screen Resolution:  95% – 1024×768 or higher

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Combined (Internal & External)

Connection Speed: 84% – Broadband

Screen Resolution:  98% – 1024×768 or higher

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Summary: Vast majority of visitors have broadband connection speeds and at least 1024×768 screen resolution.

2008 Web Statistics – Browser & OS

The following data represents 2008’s summary of “top three” browser & operating system statistics for our http://www.middlebury.edu website.

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Internal

Browsers

  1. 61.7% – Internet Explorer
  2. 26.2% – Firefox
  3. 11.8% – Safari

Operating Systems

  1. 81.4% – PC
  2. 18.4% – Mac
  3. 0.1% – Linux

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External

Browsers

  1. 58.1% – Internet Explorer
  2. 26.2% – Firefox
  3. 14.2% – Safari

Operating Systems

  1. 77.4% – Windows
  2. 21.4% – Mac
  3. 0.8% – Linux

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Combined (Internal & External)

Browsers

  1. 59.6% – Internet Explorer
  2. 26.2% – Firefox
  3. 13.1% – Safari

Operating Systems

  1. 78.8% – Windows
  2. 20.1% – Mac
  3. 0.5% – Linux

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Summary: Majority of visitors using Internet Explorer on Windows.

2008 Web Statistics – Page Views & Visits

THESE STATISTICS DO NOT INCLUDE CMS EDITING TRAFFIC!

### Page Views ###

The following data represents 2008’s summary of page view statistics for our http://www.middlebury.edu website.

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Internal page views in 2008 totaled approximately 7,186,044 or 34% of the combined total of internal and external page views, for an average of 598,837 internal page views per month.

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External page views in 2008 totaled approximately 13,941,592 or 66% of the combined total of internal and external page views, for an average of 1,161,799 external page views per month.
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Combined page views in 2008 totaled approximately 21,127,636, with an average of 1,760,636 combined page views per month.

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### Visits ###

The following data represents 2008’s summary of visit statistics for our http://www.middlebury.edu website.

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Internal visits in 2008 totaled approximately 3,027,476 or 42% of the combined total of internal and external visits, for an average of 252,290 internal visits per month.

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External visits in 2008 totaled approximately 4,109,272 or 58% of the combined total of internal and external visits, for an average of 342,439 external visits per month.
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Combined visits in 2008 totaled approximately 7,135,451, with an average of 594,620 combined visits per month.
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Summary: Most web traffic to http://www.middlebury.edu comes from off-campus.  Peak days recorded close to 75,000 page views.

2008 Web Statistics – Top Content

The following data represents a high level summary of 2008’s “top ten” content areas visited on our http://www.middlebury.edu website.

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Internal (on-campus)

  1. / (homepage)
  2. /academics/
  3. /administration/
  4. /athletics/
  5. /campuslife/
  6. /about/
  7. /services/
  8. /students/
  9. /admissions/
  10. /arts/

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External (off-campus)

  1. /academics/
  2. / (homepage)
  3. /athletics/
  4. /admissions/
  5. /administration/
  6. /about/
  7. /campuslife/
  8. /alumni/
  9. /services/
  10. /jobseekers/

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Combined (Internal & External Page Views)

  1. / (homepage)
  2. /academics/
  3. /athletics/
  4. /administration/
  5. /admissions/
  6. /campuslife/
  7. /about/
  8. /services/
  9. /alumni/
  10. /students/

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Summary: Aside from the College homepage, Academics, Athletics, Admissions, and Administration are the top content areas.

2008 Web Statistics – Search

The following data represents the summary of 2008’s “top ten” search terms/keywords entered into our Google Search Appliance or GSA, (the search engine for our www.middlebury.edu website).

To improve the overall quality of search results, all of these “top ten” search terms/keywords have been entered as keymatches in the GSA, which basically bumps them to the top of relevant search results.

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Internal Searches (from on-campus)

  1. lis
  2. segue
  3. box office
  4. inb
  5. menu
  6. midd
  7. eres
  8. campus map
  9. exam schedule
  10. library

The GSA search was used approximately 358,514 times by internal users during 2008.

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External Searches (from off-campus)

  1. tuition
  2. employment
  3. lis
  4. housing
  5. campus map
  6. address
  7. bookstore
  8. museum
  9. transcript
  10. directions

The GSA search was used approximately 404,153 times by external users during 2008.

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Combined (Internal & External Searches)

  1. lis
  2. segue
  3. tuition
  4. campus map
  5. employment
  6. box office
  7. bookstore
  8. housing
  9. inb
  10. menu

In total, the GSA search was used approximately 762,667 times during 2008.

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Summary: Web site visitors use search, a lot.

Survey Results

Here are some selections from our survey that we sent out in December:

Current website use:

  • Ease of Use: Students seem to find the current site easier to use than faculty and staff with 69% saying the website is good to excellent. The average across user type is 43% of users ease of use is poor to fair.
  • Navigation: Students again more positive than other constituencies but overall less than half of users say navigation is good to excellent.
  • Appearance: 71% say apperance is good or excellent; less than 10% say it is poor. Students again slightly more positive than others.
  • Accuracy: 36% percent of all users think information on our current website is inaccurate and/or out of date.
  • Interactivity: 15% don’t know if the current site is interactive or not; 53 % say it is poor to fair, and only 32% say it is good or excellent
  • Reflects Depth and Richness of Community: 45% say it is poor to fair; 48% say it is good to excellent; 7% say they don’t know
  • The vast majority of users (82%) use the website on a daily or hourly basis. But a surprising number of students (24%) responded that they use the website only weekly.
  • The usage of GO among students at 55%+, compared to ~30% for faculty and staff.
  • Faculty and staff used bookmarks about twice as much as students did (~40% vs. ~20%).
  • Overall, people were most dissatisfied with search and navigation of the current site.

More results to come! Stay tuned!

Focus Groups

This past week, the Web Makeover Requirements Group ran five focus groups (with a mix of students, faculty, and staff in each one) and a few other focus groups for specific stakeholders around the College.

If you attended one of our sessions, thank you for time and valuable insight.

Our focus groups had a number of topics including:

  • Customization: What type of customization of a personal web portal might you want to do?
  • Navigation: What makes navigation easy and inviting? How do you find what you’re looking for?
  • Comparisons: What other higher education websites do you like?
  • Homepage: What goes on the homepage? What should the homepage look like?
  • Tools: RSS, social media, events scheduling and calendars.

We will be holding more focus groups in the spring, if you’re interested, sign-up to be notified. If you’re already on our list, you’ll automatically be notified.

Ideas for faculty & departmental pages

One of the specific areas that I’ve been working on is how our new website can better present information & inspire engagement within departmental and individual faculty webpages. I’ve sent the following questions to all department chairs, but invite anyone with a stake in academic pages – whether you’re a faculty member, coordinator, student, alum, or interested party – to weigh in about specific features you could imagine would strengthen the academic side of our website:

1. What would you like your department/program site to do that it doesn’t do now? Think about organization, graphic design, type/amount of information, interactivity, images/sound/video, and functions like blogs, wikis, and commenting.

2. What would you like your personal faculty page (and those in your department) to do that it doesn’t do now? Are there specific needs for your discipline that should be accounted for in designing the possibilities for faculty pages?

3. Who currently manages, edits and updates your department’s and faculty’s pages? Are there other people in your department who should be able to make edits and updates (assuming that the new system will be easier to use and accessible across system and browser, which it will be!)? What role do you envision your coordinator should have in this process? What about student workers?

4. What is your desired workflow for managing your department and faculty pages (e.g. how are updates requested, who makes updates, what information is automated, how frequently would updates be made)?

5. Do you currently have a way of featuring student or alumni work or updates on your site? If so, how do you manage it? If not, would you like such a function and how would you use it?

6. Do you currently publish a departmental newsletter? If so, how frequently, and in what formats (print, email, web-based)? Would you like to shift newsletters to web-based publishing and/or integrated into your departmental homepage as a blog, downloadable PDF, or other digital platform (think of the cost and environmental savings!)? And if you don’t have a newsletter, would you like to have one (and if so, in what format)?

7. Are there ways you could imagine the web being used to help promote and support department-specific events and tasks? To what degree might your website work better to send information to majors, or promote the program to non-majors/prospectives? What functionality and workflow would be necessary to add those elements to your departmental site?

8. Are there examples of departmental or faculty pages at other institutions that you find particularly effective that you would like to emulate? If so, please provide the URLs and highlight what specifically appeals to you about that site.

9. What other comments, feedback, and guidance might you offer to the web makeover team, especially as it concerns the site(s) in your academic area?

Conversion Questions

We are at a point in the project where it is time to start thinking about the conversion process. To get that conversation started, here are a bunch of questions that we’ll need to answer (and no doubt there are many more.)

  1. How many pages are there on our present website?
  2. Will they all be converted, or will we weed some out?
  3. Once we’ve decided what will be converted, how much time do we think it will take to do all this?
  4. Who is going to do this work?
  5. Who is going to provide training and support?
  6. How much of the material can be converted to be driven by data in a database rather than maintained within the content management system?