Research on dynamic web page adaptation depending on statistical user behaviour
From a high level perspective, b2evolution now integrates the following feature set:
- Web content pubishing / Content Management System (CMS)
- User interaction / feedback / community features - sometimes dubbed as "web 2.0"
- Search Engine Optimization features (SEO)
- Traffic statistics & analytics, most of them in real time
The next logical step for us to take, such as has been requested by the community, is to implement dynamic web page adaptation based on the user behaviour we can gather through the real time traffic statistics.
The starting point for this is the "Goals" feature available in the Stats module. The goals module allows the owner of the site to define goals he would like the site users to reach. In the case of a merchant site, the main goal would be the checkout page where the user pays for goods. Note this can actually be broken down into a funnel of goals in an order such as for example:
- Product page
- Add to shopping cart button
- Check out button
- Entering shipping data
- Validating payment
On a content site, goals can be such as:
- Reading a page for more than X seconds
- Leaving a comment on a page
- Clicking through to additional content
- Clicking through to an external site
- Subsscribing to teh RSS feed
- Sharing the site through social media
- etc.
The stats module allows to measure such goals and to act upon those stats manually, in an iterative process.
However, what the most advanced users need and what we would like to give them now is a module that can dynamically adapt the website in order to maximise the desired goal conversions.
We have planned to discuss research options for this feature with interested contributors & users next month at SMX Advanced in Seattle (June 2nd & 3rd).
If you would like to participate, please contact Francois Planque through this site or @b2evolution on twitter.
I started b2evolution early 2003 after the "b2" project was abandoned by its original creator.
I tend to work almost full time on developping the next version of b2evolution, so please forgive me if I don't have a lot of time for individual support questions.
I will do my best though to make better documentation available for all frequently asked questions.