Preparing the ground for Website metrics research

The Internet is a new arena for software development, and has attracted much attention from all sides of the computing community because of the power offered by its distributed form and flexibility. There has been substantial interest in finding appropriate techniques to take advantage of its novel characteristics, which include multi platform operation and accessibility for all. The paper identifies a number of coherent research areas drawn from software metrics, HCI and hypermedia research, from the viewpoint of a research team interested in Web site metrics. These coherent areas seem to have traditionally had little communication with each other. However by changing perspective and considering each area individually and also their overlap, a body of knowledge is evident that provides the fundamental basis for Web site metrics, and hence for Web site evolution research.