“Web management is about understanding how people interact with content. You won’t learn to become an effective web manager by sitting behind your desk. Get out there and wear out some shoe leather.” Link >>

You’ll find no argument here.  As Gerry says later in the article:

“That’s because when people tell you what they want to do, or what they did do on a website, they are probably not being accurate. It’s not that they are deliberately lying. It’s more that what they think they did is usually not what they actually did.”

The $.50 word for what Gerry is talking about is “Ethnographic Research”.

Here’s the challenge back to Mr. McGovern: Most websites I’ve dealt with have a geographically dispersed audience (sometimes internationally).  How do you go about justifying the budget for web team site visit out of state, or out of the country?

Many web teams struggle to define and communicate their value to the parent company already - especially if the site has no income generating function.  Adding costly travel expenses to the budget usually doesn’t go over too well.

Or is there another way to get this insight?  I’ve done numerous phone interviews as part of research and strategy building - but they can suffer from the same “what they say is not always what they do” problem as Gerry mentions.

What other ideas are there?  Keystroke logging?  Paper-based journals that users would keep?  How about using a disposable camera and taking a picture of what they’re doing every half hour during the day?

Any other ideas for low-cost ethnographic research?