Machine Learning makes you a better webmaster

What your users do on your website reflects what they are like in the real world. So if you gain an understanding of what your customers are interested in right now on the website, you have a good platform to communicate with them on every channel.

As webmasters we want our users to read the content on our websites. Usually, it’s what we are very passionate about, and we believe that users are primarily on our websites to read our content.

The conventional tools are undermined

But how much do we really know about what users are reading? We use all the conventional web analytics tools, so we know the traffic in and out of different areas of our site, we know what the 10 most read pages are and we know what users are looking for the most.

For example, if you work for an insurance company, it’s probably quite static what users are most interested in if you look at site statistics, such as reporting insurance damage, car insurance rates, contact with customer service, etc.

Your users

Your users’ world is much more nuanced than what the statistics show. Your users are people who want to relate to your website and to your business at many different levels. They may be interested in whether you are a proper company, and how you can advise them about your products, and many will probably also want to know more about the people behind your company.

User interest

Some of their interests come and go. Perhaps your users will enter your site because they read a Tweet or Facebook comment, which created an interest in a specific topic. Other interests are based on deeper, more underlying needs, such as assurances for stepchildren, which may not be clearly described on your website.

If you do not capture the signals that their interests reflect, you lose opportunities to adapt to the world as it really is, not just on your website, but generally on the platforms (online and offline) where you meet your users.

What can Machine Learning do for you?

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could get an overview of what topics users are really interested in right now, in a way that has left it without technical constraints?

You can use Machine Learning to capture signals about users’ interests, but not as you know it today with most viewed pages and other conventional ways to realize web analytics.

Look at trends

Machine Learning makes it possible to look at trends through everything your users are doing on your website. The technique makes it possible to see interest patterns in the way your users read your content. This means that you get a completely different picture of where your users are.

Three examples

Three examples could be the following:

You can see what topics users are most interested in right now. Not only the most viewed pages, but an actual picture of where your users are in their interaction with your website.
You can see what topics are going to be hot. We’ve all heard that Google can predict flu epidemics based on search results. Now you can do the same on your own website. The fact that it’s a trending topic is a signal that the interest is growing, and we want to be able to respond to it as soon as we know about it.
You can see when users lose interest in a topic. As a webmaster should you do something about it, or do you accept that your users are leaving? You have to figure that out yourself.

If there are patterns across platforms, segments or other links, it’s possible to count on these dimensions as well.

This is why you become a better webmaster

Machine Learning makes you a better webmaster, because you can make decisions on a more qualified basis and because the basis for the decision making is closer to your customers’ actual world. Thus, you are also closer to gain the understanding you need to make the right communication and business choices. And that makes you a better webmaster.