Input please? Draft chapter on integrating UX and WA

Marko and I just wrapped up a draft of our book’s third chapter; you can download the PDF here (703Kb). We’d love your feedback on it, ideally in comments shared in this blog entry.

So you have a little context: this is the book’s third chapter. The first chapter is a case study, based on John Ferrara’s wonderful work at Vanguard, that demonstrates the value of site search analytics. The second chapter is an introduction to the topic. So we’ve introduced the topic by both showing and explaining how it works, and making a case for its value to both web analytics (WA) and user experience (UX) people alike.

This third chapter steps back a bit to explore the connection between WA and UX, and how both of these areas are incomplete forms of user research. After reading it, we hope you walk away with a better and more concrete sense of how they can fit together, as well as a rationale for why they should. We wrap up the chapter by discussing how site search analytics (SSA) is a beachhead for bringing these practices together.

So this third chapter provides something of a Big Picture for where site search analytics might fit within an organization and, more importantly, how SSA’s “parents”—web analytics and user experience design—could be improved through combining forces.

The remainder of the book are chapters that get into the nuts and bolts of actually analyzing site search data, and user experience “hacks” based on examples from many organizations that are using and benefiting from SSA.

OK, here you go; feedback please!