Analytics can be very efficient to improve a website's ergonomics.

Let's quote three main types of ergonomics studies:

• focus groups, with or without eye tracking technologies
• comparative statistical analysis
• usage measurement

Focus groups consist of observing a small number of testers (usually less than 20) when they use the website. You analyze their clicks, what they look at (eye tracking), and also ask them questions about their feelings and comments.

Comparative studies are achieved thanks to different versions of certain pages, and the analysis of the results of each version. For instance, Google optimizes their pages by testing different versions on a few million users (!) and comparing the click rates on their ads.

I will spend more time on the third method, to which Alenty's technology provides new possibilities.
A measurement tool is embeded into the page (and potentially for all the visitors). This tool records several parameters about the usage of actual visitors (visibility and usage mainly) of different elements that are inside the page.

This way you can know if users scroll down the page, or if they use such or such functionality. It is allthemore interesting as more and more actions don't make any server call, and are completely invisible to the webmaster. Ajax technologies for instance drastically improve the website's ergonomics, but on the other end, the webmaster gets less information.

The type of analysis is extremely large, and depends on the specific needs of your site:

• visibility of blocks of information, of advertising banners
• conversion funnel within a page (when several steps must be validated for instance)
• drop rate on a form (what question generates the highest drop rate, before the form is even submitted!)
• usage of different application modules (widgets for instance), etc.

Soon, a specific demo about this concept of usage, are you interested?