Additional homepage categories

[HKativa]

At the DCC meeting on 6/28/2018, we discussed the popularity of the "Featured Topics" presented on the homepage as an entry point into the digital collections, as observed in Google Analytics. The DCC discussed adding more of these, perhaps with a dedicated "Featured Topics" page, or periodically rotating out some topics for others.

In general, our conversation favored:

• Adding more topics rather than rotating out some out to keep the topics at a fixed number, the thought here being that there are certain topics, like Instrumentation, that we'll always want to feature.

• To keep the homepage manageable, adding a link for "more topics" or "browse all featured topics" (similar to the "browse collections" link on the featured collection section) that would redirect users to a dedicated "Featured Topics" page.

Potential consideration: if/how will the fact that the Featured Topics are artificial collections affect our ability to implement what's described above.

[jrochkind]

I suspect that a "more topics" link will not neccesarily result in more clicks on those topics, it's not clear to me that users will actually click on that. I think they click on the existing featured topics becuase they are right there.

I would suggest we begin with a "problem statement" before jumping to solutions. What are we trying to accomplish? Getting more user clicks? Getting those user clicks to end up on more diverse selection of items than they do now? And actually (maybe first of all) why do we want to accomplish those things, what business or user needs do they meet? Are they end-user needs (helping people find things relevant to their research, educational, or recreational needs? It might be useful to go back to our list of 'personas' developed by michelle)? Or are they business needs? (Increasing the number of users who engage with our site, etc).

(To be clear, I totally accept and support that both end-user needs and business needs are valid; just suggesting we be clear about what we are trying to accomplish and why before moving on to solutions).

After being clear about what problems we are trying to solve or value we are trying to add, we can start brainstorming/designing solutions. And ideally evaluating some of those solutions with some user-testing, if we have any staff time available for that.

In my perspective on the ideal way of working, 'problem statements' come from stakeholders like the committee, but the solutions come from us. I'm not sure having stakeholders brainstorm or demand specific solutions from us leads to the best outcome, although I know it's what stakeholders like doing. But I think the solutions are our team's job.

I think the previous success of our project has come from following a process more-or-less somewhat like I am suggesting above.

And in general, I think solutions involving "adding more things to the page" often have diminishing returns. The reason users click on the current featured topics is probably because they are some of the most prominent things on the page to click on (which I believe was intentional). Adding more things to the page doesn't neccesarily result in more clicks, it may just result in users clicking on different things (which can still be a success depending on what you were trying to solve), or in the worst case users being overwhelmed by all the options and clicking on fewer things.

[jrochkind]

I wonder if it's possible to tell from Google Analytics how many people arrive at a 'featured topic' splash page from somewhere other than our home page. Come from google, or from a link from a non-institute website, or whatever.

[HKativa]

@jrochkind I should be able to drill down in Google Analytics to see the source(s) of traffic to the featured topics pages - stay tuned! And thanks for the food for thought above. As seen in Google Analytics, the featured topics rank high as both landing pages and page views and provide accessible points of entry into our collection. Expanding them over time, in some capacity, also gives us an opportunity to further leverage our excellent metadata (using subject headings that we're already applying to our records).

[jrochkind]

Thanks @HKativa -- sorry if I might be missing what's obvious, but can we be explicit about what we intend to accomplish by leveraging metadata in this way, and how we expect/hope it would accomplish it?

Is it getting more traffic? Increasing user engagement (time spent on site, number of clicks)? Meeting un-met needs of certain users who may not be finding what they might want now (with more specificity on the nature of those needs)? Something else? It may be useful to refer to the "Personas", if we can find them.

[HKativa]

@jrochkind with regards to leveraging metadata, it's my understanding that, for the current featured topics, @catlu provided lists of subject headings applied to the records that we wanted to harvest into these artificial collections. Apologies if this is a crude understanding of how that worked - from that understanding, my assumption is that we could similarly use subject headings applied to certain works to identify and group new featured topics going forward.

I appreciate your thoughts about user personas and what we want to achieve and will definitely be looking into those, as well as the user behaviors evident in Google Analytics, as we discuss this further. In general, I think there's an opportunity here to bring greater visibility to certain works and topics that aren't getting as much exposure or traffic on the digital collections. But again, I'm still gathering info to be more specific and explicit about our goals.

[jrochkind]

I think you are correct about how the "featured topics" work, yep! I understand how we could do it, I think.

I am less clear on why we would do it, what would be intending to accomplish, what benefits we would be expecting to the organization or our users from this.

Like, ok, featured topics get a lot of clicks. It's possible adding more featured topics wouldn't get us more clicks, it would just redistribute the existing clicks between more featured topic pages (if even that). Which might be fine, depending on our goals, which might not even be about number of clicks at all. Knowing the goals will help us craft a solution most likely to meet them.

I may be being dense though. We will continue to consider and analyze!