Web site access analysis for a national statistical agency

Web access log analysis is gaining popularity, especially with the growing number of commercial web sites selling their products. The driver for this increase in interest is the promise of gaining some insights into the behaviour of users/customers when browsing through their Web site, fuelled by the desire to improve the user experience. In this chapter we describe the approach taken in analysing web access logs of a non-commercial Web site disseminating Portuguese statistical data. In developing the approach, we follow the common steps for data mining applications (the CRISP-DM phases), and give details about several phases involved in developing the data mining solution. Through intensive communication with the web site owner, we identified three data mining problems which were successfully addressed using different tools and methods. The solution methodology is briefly described here …