The importance of observing users navigation through a website is becoming more and more valuable to a company’s ROI.It can answer different questions pertaining to the organizations online service.

What time of day did people access your company’s website? What other computer activities were completed before or after users accessed the on-line service? What else was happening in the room when they were on-line? What pulled them away from the computer?”Many online observations can be tracked with an analytical program such as Google Analytics, Omniture, etc.

Don't Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability which focuses on proper site design for maximum usability.In it, there was a section in the book about website observations.A particular company wanted to find out how users navigated though their website to complete different tasks like purchasing certain product.Their study was on how a user would utilize the website’s navigation tools to best complete each task.The computer screen, that one of the test subjects was using was being recorded and monitored in real-time.What they found out was that each test user would perform differently than how the company designed the website.Much like how specific items are placed in a store to draw the shoppers into different directions, this companies’ website was virtually designed that way.Because the test users were navigating differently around the website, the company lost the potential to gain more money by selling additional products.The company was not able to navigate its users properly; however by conducting this observational research, the company was able to design a more profitable and user friendly website.

Attached is a link to this book on Amazon. The author, Steve Krug, specializes in website usability and has a number of books published with this knowledge.

http://www.amazon.com/Think-Common-Sense-Approach-Usability/dp/0789723107