Understanding User Behavior Online

User Behavior and Time Online

• Internet users engage in socializing, working, uploading and planning content, connecting through meetings and blog posts, purchasing products, monetizing content, and viewing targeted ads
• The main type of internet use involves reading, watching videos, and buying things
• An estimated 550,000 new websites and 4 million new blogs are created each day

User Behavior Analytics

• User behavior analysis is viewing how users interact with a website or app to get useful information
• This helps businesses make smart choices to improve user experience, increase how many people become customers, and make customers happier
• Transactional behavior focuses on what products users buy, how often they buy them, and how much they spend on each purchase
• Browsing behavior looks at how users explore a website or app, which pages they visit, how long they stay on each page, and what they do while browsing
• Clickstream behavior tracks the paths users take by monitoring the sequence of pages visited, links clicked, and actions performed

Key Components of Behavior Analysis

• Frequency is how often users interact with a system or perform specific actions
• Duration is the amount of time users spend on particular actions or within a system
• Recency shows the recent interactions users have had with a system or specific actions
• Intensity measures how engaged or involved users are during their interactions

The Role of Behavioral Economics and UEBA

• Behavioral economics and decision-making help explain the mental reasons behind user choices and actions in user behavior analysis
• User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) is a way to look at both individual user actions and those of larger groups to find possible security problems
• User Behavior Analytics (UBA) is when users are the people who use a system

Benefits of Understanding User Behavior

• Understanding user behavior helps businesses improve their online plans, make customers happier, and make better decisions based on data

User Behavior Analytics Tools

• Google Analytics gives detailed information about website traffic, who's using it, and how many people are buying things, with useful reports and current updates
• Hotjar combines heatmaps, recordings of user sessions, and surveys to understand user behavior better and find any problems with the website's usability
• Mouseflow provides session replays, heatmaps, and conversion funnels to provide insights into user behavior for better website performance

Applying User Behavior Analytics

• User journey mapping involves understanding the steps users take to spot problems and make the website or app better
• Analyzing user paths helps customize content and website structure to improve engagement and conversions
• User Behavior Analytics tools help track interactions and find things that stop conversions, while user behavior data can help make changes to increase conversion rates
• Understanding what drives traffic and engagement on websites can be achieved through behavioral insights
• Businesses can then improve their marketing and content to attract and keep more visitors

Algorithms

• Algorithms are sets of rules that computers use to solve problems, used by search engines and social media to rank content
• Algorithms look at things like keywords, relevance, how new something is, and how people interact with it to decide what shows up first in search results and social media feeds

Black Box Technology

• Black box AI refers to AI systems where how they work inside is hidden from the user, like a black box where you only see what goes in and out
• An example is a machine learning model for predicting the stock market, where you get a prediction without knowing how it was determined

How Black Box AI Models Work

• Black box AI models spread decision-making across many artificial neurons, similar to the human brain but the internal decision-making process is not easy to understand
• Black box technology in web writing refers to the secret algorithms tech companies use to analyze and rank content

Algorithms and Content Creation

• Algorithms help make sure users see good content, influencing how writers create content and get it to the right people

Ethics

• Ethics involve making sure your content is honest, fair, and respectful, while avoiding plagiarism by properly citing sources
• Consider including information from reliable science sources when writing about climate change to properly show how global temperatures are rising

Data

• Data means information in the form of facts, statistics, or records
• Data can support arguments, provide evidence, or inform the readers about a topic

Privacy

• Privacy protects personal information and gives people control over how their information is collected, used, and shared
• When you collect email addresses for a newsletter, explain how you'll use them and give people a way to unsubscribe

Balancing Data Use and Privacy

• Balancing valuable content with responsible data use and respect for privacy builds trust and creates a positive online experience

Principles of Data Ethics

• Data ethics means doing the right thing when collecting, protecting, and using people’s personal information

Five Principles of Data Ethics

• Ownership: Customers own their personal data and must consent to its collection
• Transparency: Explain how and why you collect, use, and sort customer data
• Privacy: Keep customer data secure, even with consent to collect and analyze Personally Identifiable Information (PII)
• Intention: Align data collection reasons with ethical goals
• Outcomes: Prevent “disparate impact” that could harm certain groups

Examples of PII

• Full name
• Birthdate
• Street Address
• Phone Number
• Credit Card Information
• Bank Account number
• Passport number

Disinformation

• Disinformation is false or misleading information spread on purpose to trick, excite, or provoke people
• These campaigns are used by companies and governments, and high school students often struggle to identify credibility issues in sources

Social Media and Disinformation

• Social media platforms can spread disinformation due to limited information that inspires sensational content or "clickbait"
• Modern rhetoric addresses how technology shapes communication, with scholars studying digital and visual aspects of persuasive discourse

Mitigating Disinformation

• Contemporary rhetorical scholarship offers insights for understanding and mitigating the impact of disinformation campaigns on public discourse