Introducing Zones to a Web Site: A Test Based Evaluation on Semantics, Content, and Business Goals

Content providers compete for the user's attention on information services offered. The placement of content within a Web site is an important factor, influencing behavior of and choices made by users.The Gugubarra project aims at understanding the interests of registered users, by evaluating their behavior and actions performed while visiting the site. For this purpose, we have introduced the concept of ``zones'', which allows segmentation of a Web page, thereby enabling us to consider the placement of information and the possible actions taken by users within these zones. This paper describes the evaluation of the use of zones and their applicability in different scenarios. Several tests were performed using one of our tools to create zones on different Web sites. The main focus is to evaluate aspects of the zoning concept and to test how zones are used in real life situation. The test results should show how the chosen semantics of topic weights influences the use of zones and topics.