Using interactive visualizations of WWW log data to characterize access patterns and inform site design

Harry Hochheiser and Ben Shneiderman

Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 2001, vol. 52, issue 4, 331-343

Abstract: HTTP server log files provide Web site operators with substantial detail regarding the visitors to their sites. Interest in interpreting this data has spawned an active market for software packages that summarize and analyze this data, providing histograms, pie graphs, and other charts summarizing usage patterns. Although useful, these summaries obscure useful information and restrict users to passive interpretation of static displays. Interactive visualizations can be used to provide users with greater abilities to interpret and explore Web log data. By combining two‐dimensional displays of thousands of individual access requests, color, and size coding for additional attributes, and facilities for zooming and filtering, these visualizations provide capabilities for examining data that exceed those of traditional Web log analysis tools. We introduce a series of interactive visualizations that can be used to explore server data across various dimensions. Possible uses of these visualizations are discussed, and difficulties of data collection, presentation, and interpretation are explored.

Date: 2001
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/1532-2890(2000)9999:99993.0.CO;2-Y

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jamist:v:52:y:2001:i:4:p:331-343

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://doi.org/10.1002/(ISSN)1532-2890

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology from Association for Information Science & Technology
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().