Web Usage: Exploring Navigational Behavior of Users the case of the Official Web Site of Addis Ababa University
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Date
2011-06
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Abstract
Websites are becoming among the most important media for communicating with the
stakeholders. Now a days, many organizations realized that the need to investigate the behavior
of their website users are crucial to meet their objectives through undertake a research. One such
a research undertakings is using web usage mining.
Web Usage Mining (WUM), refers to the process of knowledge discovery from databases
(KDD) applied to the Web data. It comprises three main stages: the preprocessing of raw data,
the discovery of schemas and the analysis (or interpretation) of results.
The redesigning task of the website has not ever taken a solid input except simple discussion and
implementation internally. Indeed, the website designers, browsing expectation, and the actual
user’s behavior navigation pattern were not considered.
In order to develop improved website services, there are many options left for web administrator
to evaluate the website. Firstly, the site designer could bring amendments on the website based
on their expectations of users. Secondly, the web administrator or web master could collect
information from users, using the different data collection methods like interview, discussion, or
observation. Thirdly, researcher could use the web usage analysis to understand their web usage
behaviors.
In this research paper, the web server log files of the official web server were utilized to study
the navigational behavior of users using the web utilization miner tool. Access log file was a
target data source as can be shown in the navigational behavior of users.
Based on the methodology proposed in Jaideep, et al (2000) was used in this research work
comprised of log raw data, pattern discovery and pattern analysis. For discovery of navigational
behavior, the Web Utilization Miner WUM was employed, a mining system for the discovery of
interesting navigation patterns. The researcher using WUM’s mining language MINT
dynamically specifies the interesting criteria for navigation patterns. The researcher found that
there are directories, which are frequently visited in the website. Other findings are also
discussed based on which recommendation is forwarded.
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Web Usage