Usability Report
The primary focus of this usability report is whether the new website of Grady College is attractive, user friendly and easy to navigate on mobile devices. Therefore, this report will introduce the descriptive data first and then analyze the users’ behavior in these aspects.  I was assigned to focus on prospective students and graduate students, and I will propose suggestions for improving sites for prospective graduate students in the last part of this report. Because the new site was launched in February, this report based on the data from February 8, 2017 to April 9, 2017. 1. This report also analyzed previous version of Grady website. It is fair to analyze old version website in two months, from December 2 to February 2, because the new version was analyzed in two months as well.
 
Descriptive data

1. The majority of our users are female aged from 18 to 24 (Female: Male= 65.68%: 43.32%; 18-24 age=40.76%). Most of the users visit Grady website through desktop (73.03%), and the rest of them use mobile phones (23.99%) and tablets (2.98%).
2. The number of pageview varies depending on the days of the week. It increases from Monday to Wednesday and then decreases from Thursday to Sunday. Usually, the number of pageview will reach the peak during the weekdays and then reach the bottom on weekends. It indicates that users are mainly students and faculty in Grady college. It also explains why most of the users visit Grady websites on desktops.
3. Both the new users and returned users make up around 50% of users in Grady website (New users: returned users= 49.5%: 50.5%). Most of the users come from the United States (92.88%), and rest of them come from China (1.11%), India (0.65%), United Kingdom (0.47%) and etc. It is possible that these users from other countries are applicants who are interested in Grady College’s programs. Thus, users of Grady websites are consisted of current students, staff and prospective students.
4. Users mainly come from the following sources: Organic (54.4%), Direct (26.16%), Referral (12.34%), Social (7.21%) and Email (0.24%). It indicates that most of the users access the Grady website through the result of search engine and directly type the website of Grady college. Users who visit Grady websites through social media are mainly from Facebook (82.06%) and Twitter (11.87%) users. However, the bounce rates are high, which suggests that people may just click it by mistakes or do not intent to deeply explore on websites.

Attractiveness in engaging users

1. On average time, people spend 3 minutes on Grady home page, which is much higher than average time they spend on other pages. I think it is because the home page has more content to read. The total word numbers on the homepage is 809; this takes fast readers about 1 minute to read, while average readers may take 4 minutes. Because of the 3-minutes average time, I acknowledge the attractiveness of the homepage.
2. The homepage is ranked as the top landing page, which indicates that this page is very important. It is also the top exit page, and 39.18% of viewers exit on this page, which is higher than the average. I think it is because of the bounce rate, which is 45.72%. With the high bounce rate and large total number of pageview, the exit rate of homepage is relatively high.

Easy navigation

1. People visit the following pages after they visit the homepage of Grady website: academics (25.35%); faculty (13.38%); about-grady (8.22%); apply (8.22%); search (5.15%); events (3.98%); grady-students (3.04%); news (2.91%); about-grady/contact (2.54%); alumni (2.33%). Among the following top 10 pages, five of them are in Hamburger icon, and two of them are sections on the home page (events and about-grady). The elements on the homepage are interesting, but the engagement with users on homepage is not good enough. Top 10 following pages after homepage in previous period did not include “search” page, while new website indeed contains it. It indicates that new Grady website need to improve its navigation.
2. Compared with previous version of Grady website, the following page of homepage are “department” (20.05%), “graduate_studies” (11.91%), “students” (11.44%), “about” (7.41%), “major” (5.11%), etc. The categories of following pages implied that visitors usually have interested in learn more about Grady’s majors and its graduate studies. It indicates that the branch of navigation bar in new websites can contain “Department: ADPR, Entertainment and Media Studies, Journalism”, “Graduate studies” etc.
3. 5.15% of users have visited the search site, which indicates that the navigation of website needs improvement. Because the Google analysis view sets the search term with high frequency, I use the next pages of the search page to analyze what users are looking for. The key words of search terms are scholarship, faculty, academics, forms, tuitions, and contact. It suggests that the branches of navigation bar can contain “scholarship”, “program forms”, “tuitions” and “contact us” etc.
4. The homepage of Grady website takes longer time to load than the average. The average time to load the homepage is 21.71% higher than the average, while the average time to load M.A degree page under the academics is 352.75% higher than the average. The Google analysis provides suggestions to optimize images, enable compression and remove render-blocking JavaScript and CSS content, etc.

Mobile navigation

1. The average time that mobile users spend on homepage is 1 minute, which is shorter than average time on all pages. It indicates that mobile users usually have very clear targets when they visit the homepage. Therefore, the design of the mobile homepage need to let users easily find the navigation bar and have less content to read. 
2. The data show that the load time of faculty page on mobile is 142.40% higher than the average. The faculty page contains lots of pictures and has hundreds of staff’s portfolios. It is hard for users to find the professor’s email or phone number. I suggest the top search icon add another frame to let users search “name” directly.

13.Suggestions:

• Desktop version-- make the hamburger icon more obvious; change the layout of navigation; have branches under big sections: about, prospective students, current students, alumni, research; Under the categories of prospective students and current students, we can have smaller branches as: Undergraduate students, Master, PhD, etc; List a line of navigation above the hamburger icon and highlight the topics of the following pages; double check the JavaScript code on the websites and improve the load speed of the websites.
• Mobile version----set a navigation bar on the top of the page; make the hamburger icon more clear and obvious; add search “name” on the top of faculty page

 
Prospective students

1. Among users who click through other websites to access Grady websites, almost half of them come from the home page of UGA. The rest of the referral users come from introduction of degree and major pages in graduate school websites. We can reasonable infer that prospective students who want to apply to programs in Grady take these paths: UGA<admission/academics<apply.
2. In order to help incoming students to find application page easily, here are two suggestions: Add navigation bar on the top of the homepage and then highlight “admission” or “apply”; When people click “learn more” about Grady on the homepage, which will take them to the “about-page” of Grady, here we can add a side bar or a bottom section to notify new users to apply.

Abstract
This report contains the pattern of rating of “Powerless” across weeks, the comparison between rating performance of “Powerless” with its competitors, and suggestion for future actions of “Powerless”. The analysis can help general managers to make decisions on renew next season. 

​Introduction

• Broadcasting high quality programs in 5:00 AM, 12:00 PM and 4:00 PM is important, because the audience that viewing television is increasing from these time slots. Programs with high rating and share can act the role in “lead-off” strategy.
• On Tuesday, Columbus has experienced bad weather. The higher HUTs than usual indicates that people stay at home and they care about the influence brought by the bad weather. On Tuesday, CBS10 played “special weather report” instead of regular “Early Show”, while other three stations still played national news. It was a wise choice to report weather situation when people needed it.
• The rating of CBS 10 is relatively high when the station is showing “CBS10 TV News at 6 AM”, “CBS10 TV News at 12 PM” and “CBS10 TV News at 11 PM”. These programs are reporting the local news in Columbus. It shows our advantage is reporting local news.
• Overall, the performance of CBS 10 is better than other three stations, because bothe of the rating and share are higher.

• The HUTs of Columbus is increasing from 7:00 AM to 9:00 AM. While the rating of CBS 10 increase rapidly in this time period. The audience in early morning daypart mainly flow to FOX and ABC. Reason: In 7:00-9:00 AM of Monday, the HUTs increased 14%, while the share of FOX increased 20%, the share of ABC increased 37.5%, the share of NBC decreased 9%, the share of CBS decreased 35%.
• In 7:00-9:00 AM, CBS10 plays “Early show”, which is a national news program. In the same period, ABC plays “Good morning American”, NBC plays “Today” and Fox plays “Good Day Columbus”. Both of “Good morning American” and “Today” are national news programs. “Good Day Columbus” is a program about local news. Audience prefer to watch local news or high rated TV shows in 7- 9 AM.
• The rating trends of CBS10 shows that the rating decreased rapidly from 5:30 to 6:30 PM. Audience mainly flow toward NBC. Reason: In 5:30-6:30 PM of Monday, the HUTs increased 9%, while the share of NBC increased 31%, the share of ABC decreased 12.5%, the share of FOX decreased 33%, the share of CBS decreased 13.6%. In this time period, NBC plays “Nightly News”, while CBS plays “Evening news”, ABC plays “ABC world news” and Fox plays “Family guy” and “office”. The “Nightly News” is ranked higher than programs showed on other three stations. It shows that audience would like to watch news rather than TV shows in 5:30-6:30 PM. Among these stations who broadcast news, audience prefer to watch high rated TV news programs.
• On Saturday, the rating of NBC is higher than CBS from 7:00 AM to 8:30 AM. During this time period, NBC has broadcasted “Saturday Today” and “NBC 4 Today Saturday”, while CBS has showed “Early show”. The difference between two stations is that NBC’s programs fit more on Saturday. “Saturday Today” and “Early show” are programs about national news. “NBC 4 Today Saturday” is a program reported local news. ABC has played “Good morning American Saturday” in the same time period, but the rating is low. People have preference to watch local news that is special for Saturday.
• On Sunday, Superbowl brought great increase in rating of CBS 10. Superbowl worked as a good “lead-in” program to the following TV shows and evening new in 11 PM.

Suggestions:

• Keep playing “special weather report” in inclement weathers or urgent weather situations.
• Keep to play “CBS10 TV News at 6 AM”, “CBS10 TV News at 12 PM” and “CBS10 TV News at 11 PM”. These programs have high ratings and shares. They act the role of informing local news to residents in Columbus.
• On weekdays, change the “Early show” in 7-9 AM as a talented anchor reported local news or local interesting stories.
• On weekdays, improve the news quality or program quality of “Evening news” at 6:00 PM. Put more efforts on news production on this program.
• On Saturday, move Local news program “CBS10 TV NwSHD @ 6” to 7:00 AM to 8:30 AM. Move “early show” to 5:00 AM to 6:00 AM. Make this news program fit more in Saturday, such as local activities, local weather and so on.

 

Introduction

• CBS 46 in Atlanta and CBS 10 in Columbus have almost the same schedule in weekdays, except 3 time periods: 12:30 PM and 4:00-5:00 PM, CBS Atlanta has news programs while CBS Columbus has shows; 5:00-6:00 PM, CBS Atlanta has a show while CBS Columbus has a news program.
• Overall, CBS in Atlanta has the same local news hours as CBS in Columbus.
• Although the schedule of CBS46 and CBS10 are similar in weekdays, the patterns of rating are totally different. The rating of CBS in Columbus increased rapidly in four periods: 5:00-6:00 AM, 11:30-12:00 PM, 4:30-6:00 PM and 10:30-11:00 PM. The rating increases when the station is going to report local news. The rating of CBS in Atlanta increased rapidly in three periods: 9:00-11:30 AM, 12:30-4:00 PM and 7:30-10:00 PM. The rating increases at 4 PM is because of counter programming theory. Other three stations are playing shows while CBS is playing news programs.
• Columbus region has higher percentage of audiences to view television than Atlanta region in the morning, especially from 6:30 AM to 12:00 PM.
• The change of rating in CBS 46 (Atlanta) is relatively flat when compared with the rating trends of CBS 10 (Columbus). The standard deviation of rating of CBS 46 (Atlanta) is smaller than the one of CBS 10 (Columbus).
• The lowest rating in CBS 10 (Columbus) happened in 8 AM, when this station plays “Early show”, a national news program. The lowest rating in CBS 46 (Atlanta) happened in 9 AM, when this station plays “700 club”, a talk show from a Christian perspective.
• The trend of HUTs in Atlanta shows that it increases from 5:00 AM to 10:00 PM, and then decreases until 11:30 PM. The share of CBS46 basically keep stable from morning to night. Actually station is losing audiences from morning to night, because the HUTs is increasing before 10:00 PM while the share is still the same.
• Both of two stations have special weather report. When the special weather report showed in CBS 10 (Columbus), the rating of CBS increased rapidly, which is higher than usual weekday rating in same period. However, when the special weather report showed in CBS 46 (Atlanta), the rating of CBS increased a little bit. I think here are two reasons. 1. CBS 10 showed special weather report in 7:00-9:00 AM, while CBS 46 showed it in 5:00-6:00 PM. In the morning, people care about weather more, because it will influence their whole day schedule. In the afternoon, people are going home and will stay at home. They do not care about weather very much. 2.CBS 10 is the top stations to report local news in Columbus region. People have the tendency to tune in channels who usually did good jobs in local news when the weather is bad.

 
Suggestions to Atlanta CBS 46 station:

• The local news is the key to earn rating and share. It is important to improve the quality of local news program.
• Put the local weather report in a proper position and use it to improve the reputation of the station.

Introduction

• The trends of HUTs in Atlanta shows it is important for programs that start from 6:00 AM, 12:00 PM and 4:00 PM to be attractive. Increasing audiences turn on TV in these time slots. Good programs can keep audience flow in our TV station.
• In weekdays, three programs perform well in CBS 46 station: 11:00-- AM Price RT; 4:00 PM-- ATL news@4pm; 10:00 PM—CSI or Good Wife. It is because their ratings are top three among all programs in CBS 46. These programs can be listed as our excellent programs. We can take advantage of these programs to apply the “Lead-in” strategy.
• The HUTs of Atlanta is increasing from 4:00-10:00 PM, while the rating of CBS 46 is decreasing rapidly from 4:30-5:00 PM, and then maintains a low rating in period from 5:00 to 7:30 PM. CBS46 broadcasts “People’s court” and “Insider” from 5:00 to 7:30 PM.
• In the same time period (5:00-7:30 PM), COX reports local news and worldwide news; NBC plays Dr. Phil, local news in 6 PM and news reported by a famous anchor; FOX shows local news and entertainment news. In 5:00 PM time slot, audience flow mainly toward FOX and COX and a small part of audience flows toward NBC. Reason: In 5:00-7:30 PM, the HUTs increased 6%, while the share of FOX increased 32%, the share of COX increased 7%, the share of NBC maintains the same, the share of CBS decreased 32%. Audience prefer to watch news or high rated TV shows in 5PM.
• The rating of early morning news in CBS 46 is lower than other three stations. Although the rating of early morning news in CBS 46 is increasing, the growth rate is lower than other three stations.
• The 10:00 PM TV shows in CBS 46 has relatively high rating. We use these CSI shows or “GOOD wife” show as “lead-in” programs to 11:00 PM local news.
• We lose audience from 10:00 TV shows to 11:00 PM local news. In 10:00-11:00 PM, the HUTs increased 10%, while the share of NBC increased 100%, the share of COX increased 33%, the share of FOX decreased 40%, the share of CBS decreased 40%. Audience flow turns to NBC and COX 11:00 PM news.
• In weekend, the performance of CBS 46 is very bad. It has lots of paid programs in weekend, and the total rating is very low compared with other three stations.

 
Suggestions:

• We need to improve the quality of early morning news program. Put more effort or budget in news production.
• Maintain three excellent programs in the same slots and use them as lead-in of following programs. It is because audiences have formed the habit to view these programs.
• Changed the program of “People’s court” in 5:00 PM into news program or TV shows with celebrity. We can hire several anchors to host a news program. Try some new anchors with different personality or famous anchors that are familiar with Atlanta.
• Put more efforts on CBS Atlanta news in 11:00 PM.
• Get revenue through making more local news and then reduce the number of paid programs on Saturday and Sunday.