CSEE Professor Tülay Adali and Professor Kelly Westlake from the University of Maryland School of Medicine received an award from the joint UMBC-UMB Research and Innovation Partnership Seed Grant Program for a project  that ultimately will improve the recovery of stroke victims. The new joint UMBC-UMB Seed Grant Program pairs primary investigators from UMBC and the University of Maryland, Baltimore to conduct research as a team. Successful partners are offered research funding of up to $75,000 over twelve months to pursue their collaboration.

Nearly 800,000 U.S. citizens have a stroke each year, making it the leading cause of long-term disability. Treatment for stroke victims is mainly targeted towards residual functional deficits, especially regaining hand functions. Their project (“Independent Vector Analysis to Investigate Cognitive Neural Networks after Stroke: A Comparison between Two Rehabilitation Interventions”) will have a direct impact on stroke rehabilitation through objective evaluation of the two main treatment paradigms currently in use: unimanual (involving one hand) and bimanual (involving both hands) training. The evaluation will use the new class of medical image analysis techniques, independent vector analysis (IVA) algorithms, developed by Dr. Adali and her research group. The new class of IVA algorithms successfully captures subject variability and perform significantly better than the approaches traditionally used for the problem.

The initial results of the project demonstrate the advantages using IVA for the problem and will be presented this month at the 48th Annual Conference on Information Sciences and Systems in Princeton, NJ. The PIs are preparing two journal submissions, one based on the methods developed for the task and a second one emphasizing clinical significance of the results. These results will also provide the preliminary data for the proposal that Professors Adali and Westlake plan to submit to the NIH later this year.

Mobile first! Responsive design! You’ve heard all of the buzzwords and catchphrases. Countless helpful and not-so-helpful articles proclaim the rise of mobile, but what practical steps can you take to make your brand more approachable for mobile users?

When arguing a case to make a website mobile-friendly, abundant evidence exists to present to the business owner, such as the Pew Research study that shows that 56% of US adults carry around a smartphone. However, while general statistics are useful for demonstrating the value of designing with mobile in mind, they don’t provide the guidance necessary to understand precisely how users will interact with a particular brand on their phone.

Frequently, design and development teams will be asked to redesign a dated website to be responsive. Looking at existing data would provide crucial insight into how best to present information to mobile users. Google Analytics offers a number of free features for incredibly detailed analysis of mobile activity, with the ability to easily compare to desktop activity.

If you haven’t yet installed Google Analytics, setting it up is easy. Just create a free account, and then Google will walk you through the process. You’ll need to place a tracking code in your page before you can start to collect the sort of data that we’ll review in this article.

Analyzing Mobile Visits Via Reports

The standard reports are where most people browse in Google Analytics. Let’s look at the most important ones for mobile activity.

1. Overview

This report (at “Audience” → “Mobile” → “Overview”) breaks down visits by mobile, desktop and tablet. It’s helpful for quickly seeing high-level statistics, such as what percentage of visits are from mobile devices.

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When clients question the value of making a static website responsive, I find that simply showing them how many mobile visits they’re getting often helps to convince them. If the experience of a significant portion of users is less than optimal, then the owner should realize that it’s time to take their needs seriously. In my experience, desktop activity accounts for only about 50 to 60% of visits, with mobile and tablet combined making up the rest (close to half!).

However, a development and design team should dig deeper than just an overview. This is where the “Devices” report comes in handy.

2. Devices

This report (“Audience” → “Mobile” → “Devices”) breaks down statistics into the specific devices that people use to access your website. The details here can help you pinpoint problems with usability on a particular phone, tablet or mobile operating system. For example, if the Galaxy S III shows a significantly higher bounce rate than the iPhone, then you might want to compare how your website appears on those devices.

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While viewing the report for a local service-based business whose website focuses on lead generation, I saw significantly higher conversions from iPads than any phones in the list. Simply cramming the desktop website into a smartphone browser did not give users a positive experience with the lead submission process. However, at the tablet size, the website was still large enough for visitors to use the form easily enough.

As someone who manages online advertising campaigns, I generally find the opposite to be true, with tablets converting at a lower rate than phones. These statistics, then, reinforced the need to improve the mobile experience to bring phone conversions up to par. With a responsive layout that eliminates the need for the user to “pinch and zoom” to fill out the form in their phone’s browser, the website would perform more effectively.

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But this report doesn’t stop with a list of devices. You may also select various dimensions across the top to review factors such as screen resolution and operating system. Reviewing the most common screen resolutions of visitors will help you to plan the breakpoints of a responsive redesign. You can also flag an excessively high bounce rate or a low time on site for a particular resolution, which might be the result of content getting cut off at that size.

3. Browser & OS

This report (“Audience” → “Technology“ → “Browser & OS”) shows the main browsers being used to access your website, and it also highlights trends — for example, whether the default browser or Firefox is used more on Android phones. Also, you can view statistics by operating system and even add a column for operating system version (click the “Secondary Dimension” drop-down menu, and choose “Operating System Version”).

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The report could also reveal how much effort you should put into making the website backwards-compatible. For instance, when reviewing statistics for an engineering company’s website, our development team found a significant number of visitors still browsing in Internet Explorer 8 (probably in offices whose IT departments are still debating whether to upgrade from CRT to LCD monitors!), with only a small percentage coming from mobile devices. These results helped to focus us on making the website usable on old systems.

Creating Advanced Segments

While the main reports provide plenty of helpful information, advanced segments enable you to drill deeper into useful data on mobile visitors. You can set up segments to distinguish between mobile, tablet and desktop visits, and even segment more narrowly by screen size and device.

To view advanced segments, make sure you’re in the “Reporting” tab in your Google Analytics account. Near the top of the screen (between the graph and the menu bar), click the drop-down arrow beside “All Visits.” A menu will appear allowing you to view existing segments and create new ones. In the “Built-In” segments, you should be able to select the default ones for “Mobile Traffic” and “Tablet Traffic.”

However, you’ll want to create a segment just for desktop traffic (because the only built-in option lumps desktops and tablets together).

Select “Create New Segment” and, in the new menu that appears, choose “Technology” in the left sidebar. Scroll down to “Device Category” and enter “Desktop.” Then, save the segment so that you can use it in your account.

You can apply advanced segments to reports throughout Google Analytics’ interface. I frequently use these when reviewing statistics in general, because user behavior on mobile differs so much from on tablets and desktops. In addition, when troubleshooting a spike in bounce rates or some other problem, I’ll often use these segments to determine whether the problem is specific to a device type. Below are some useful reports to review when filtering down to mobile traffic.

1. Pages

Here (“Behavior” → “Site Content” → “All Pages”), you can determine the top pages viewed by mobile users. This information is valuable for planning which navigation elements to include on mobile and for identifying any important pages that mobile users are not finding. In addition, comparing the top pages on desktop and mobile will yield insight into the different goals of each user type. For instance, a desktop user might browse heavily through your product inventory, while a smartphone user might just be trying to find an address to your nearest location.

2. Exit Pages

This report (“Behavior” → “Site Content” → “Exit Pages”) shows the last pages people view before leaving the website. When you’ve filtered down to a mobile segment, review the top exit pages and determine whether any mobile-specific problems are hindering visitors from completing the desired goal.

For example, we found that a lot of people, especially mobile users, were leaving our company’s website on pages that discuss particular services. To address this, we placed headers with brief “Contact us” messaging at the top of these pages.

3. Visitors Flow

This report (“Audience” → “Visitors Flow”) shows the top paths people take through your website. Again, comparing mobile and desktop behavior should help you to decide which pages to make most prominent at each size.

On one website, I found that the “About” page was one of the most common pages for users to visit on desktop. However, on mobile, the page was much lower down in the list, because the link to it was in a navigation bar that was barely noticeable on a phone.

4. Traffic Sources

This report (“Acquisition” → “All Traffic”) shows the top sources through which people arrive on the website. Comparing the mobile and desktop segments here will show whether any particular source skews towards mobile users. I’ve often noticed a higher percentage of traffic coming from Facebook on mobile than on desktop, because so many people access Facebook via a smartphone app. This awareness can help you to tailor your messaging at mobile sizes to people who have discovered your brand via social media. For example, if it’s a blog, make sure that the social sharing buttons are visible and functional on mobile.

In addition, this report can help you to diagnose problems with search engine indexing on mobile. In 2013, Google announced stricter regulations and penalties for websites with a poor mobile experience. If your organic traffic is steady on desktop but extremely low on mobile, then you might want to look for factors that are penalizing you on Google, such as Flash video or faulty redirects that take users from a subpage to the home page.

Act On The Data

If you have access to the Google Analytics account for the website you’re rebuilding, then you’ll have plenty of material to inform the design and development decisions. Take the time to review that data!

If you need to defend the value of making a website responsive, start by finding the percentage of recent visits from mobile and tablet. Move on to devices, browsers and screen sizes to decide which elements to include in the navigation for mobile. And use top pages, visitor flows and traffic sources to determine which content to make most prominent and how to guide users through the website at each size.

The most dangerous decision to make when planning any website is to ignore data about your audience. Any business that neglects to provide a friendly Web presence for mobile users will likely lose out on revenue to competitors who are doing it right. Design, development and marketing teams have a responsibility to use all of the data at their fingertips to guide decision-makers to make their websites work for a mobile audience.

Other Resources

• “Tracking Mobile Visitors in Google Analytics: A Checklist Guide for Mobile Insights,” Bridget Randolph, Distilled
• “What You Can Learn From Google Analytics Mobile Reports,” Anna Lewis, Search Engine Watch
• “How to Track Mobile Traffic in Google Analytics,” Andrew Shotland, Social Media Today
• “How to Use the New Google Analytics Advanced Segments,” Kristi Hines, KISSmetrics
• Help, Google Analytics
  This official support website has plenty of resources for getting started and for digging deeper into statistics.

(al, il)

Front page image credits: Timo Elliott

© Tim Jensen for Smashing Magazine, 2014.

Welcome, friends, to WebdesignerDepot’s monthly WordPress plugin roundup, March 2014 edition.

Every time I write one of these articles, I aim to include plugins that meet a variety of needs. This month however, there is a common thread amongst some (not all) of them: communities. More specifically, some of these plugins would be most useful on WordPress-based community sites. Anyone can use them of course, but they seem better-suited to WordPress sites with large numbers of users.

That said, look through the list. Try them out, have fun, and let us know what you think!

Simple Exclude Categories

Simple Exclude Categories provides additional settings for the Reading section in your settings menu. Simply put, it allows you to exclude entire categories of posts from your home page. There are numerous possible uses, especially if you can’t, or don’t know how to make custom post types.

FTP Sync — theme, media & plugin files

FTP Sync is one of the more interesting plugins on this list for a couple of reasons. First, there’s the functionality itself, which could speed up the process of deploying small changes to WordPress sites. Secondly, you can use the same plugin to create remote backups via FTP. Sadly, SFTP is not yet supported, but that’s coming.

The developer gives this interesting recommendation on the plugin’s WordPress.org page:

For best results, setup your local site’s wp-config.php to use your remote site’s database so you every time you sync your files even the database will match up with everything (since it’s the same database!).

WP Report Post

Remember what I was saying about plugins better suited to communities? WP Report Post is one of them. It adds a simple text link preceded by a small red icon to the header or footer of your post. You can, as an alternative, insert the link manually.

Clicking on that link loads a small form which allows the user to express why they think the post is inappropriate. On the admin side, you’ll see all flagged posts listed much as they appear on the All Posts screen. You’ll have the option to unpublish the post, delete it, or just delete the report.

Youtube Like Rating

Like Youtube’s rating system? You can use Youtube Like Rating to add “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” buttons to each and every post (“Green vs. Red bar” included!). You can allow everyone to vote, or only registered users. You can also enable voting on comments.

WP Product Review

Want to write product review on your blog without creating a custom post type? Once WP Product Review is installed, just make a new regular post. At the bottom of the page, you’ll be asked if this post is a review or not. Selecting “Yes” opens up a whole bunch of extra fields, where you can list things like the product’s features, its pros and cons, add a product image, and so on.

Sender

Another great one for communities, Sender does just that; it allows you to send custom e-mails to all users. It’s a simple plugin, there’s no WYSIWYG editing, just a text field for your message. You can choose to send the e-mail to all users, or just select the ones you want.

You are given the option of sending the e-mails through the Wp-mail function, PHPs default mail function, or the SMTP server of your choice.

WP Notifications Manager

WP Notifications Manager provides a simple interface for disabling the e-mail notifications that WordPress sends out. You can disable/enable the New User e-mails and Password Change e-mails separately. Additionally, you can have these e-mails sent to a different address, if you don’t want it going to the main e-mail.

Launch Check

Launch Check performs a couple of basic yes/no tests to see if you’re still using the default WordPress tagline, if you’ve opened up your site to search engines, and if you’ve installed Google Analytics. If your site fails any of these tests, you’re presented with notifications on the Admin side.

I’d like to see further development to this plugin. For example, if there was a plugin to remind me to change URLs in the content that still include “localhost”…

Contact Form 7: Wysiwyg Field

I don’t normally like just throwing WYSIWYG functionality around, but if you really want to have this option for text areas in your contact forms, it’s there. Just install this plugin, edit your form, and go. (Requires the Contact Form 7.)

Cookieless Comments

WordPress uses cookies to remember things like names, e-mail addresses, and so on for people who comment on your site regularly. If your site is based in the EU, there’s a law that says you have to inform users about the use of tracking cookies on your site.

If you’d rather not bother setting up a notification of some sort, you can use Cookieless Comments to simply disable those cookies. It’s not an ideal solution, perhaps, but it works.

WP Pipes

Now, I’m not a developer, so I have a limited comprehension of how “pipes” work. As I understand it, they are a means of aggregating/pulling information for display elsewhere. With WP Pipes you can add Yahoo-like pipe functionality to your WordPress install.

A quick test reveals that you can use this plugin to pull in posts from RSS feeds, and re-publish them (link your sources, people). You can also select specific categories of posts (and, I assume, custom post types) and publish them in a separate RSS feed.

You can do more, of course, but that’s for brighter minds than mine to figure out.

Inline Comments

Feeling the Medium comments-on-paragraphs jealousy? Feel jealous no more! Register your site with Disqus, and this plugin will give each paragraph in your posts its own comment thread.

Mind you, I do worry a bit. I’ve seen how long Disqus threads can take to load sometimes, and I wonder if using this system for each and every paragraph might be frustratingly slow. Still, I feel like it’s a step in the right direction. Having immediate context for a comment thread is a wonderful thing.

Simply Map Me

Use a lot of Google map embeds on your website? Instead of pasting the full embed code into the Text view of your post every time, just grab Simply Map Me. Once activated, just use type in a location (ie. Toronto, Ontario) and wrap it with the [map] short-code.

Bonus: WordPress Bitcoin

I marked WordPress Bitcoin as a “bonus” because I don’t know enough about Bitcoin to test it properly. Apparently, you can use it to accept Bitcoin payments via your WordPress site.

As a non-developer, I cannot speak to its security, either. Any cryptocurrency enthusiasts out there who want to give this a try?

Have you used any of these plugins? Have we missed one of your favorites? Let us know in the comments.

Featured image/thumbnail, uses news image via Shutterstock.

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