© Copyright 2006 by the Wyoming Department of Employment, Research & Planning
Vol. 43 No. 3
In order to better understand and anticipate our customers’ needs, Research & Planning (R&P) began tracking customer contacts from the public in September 2004. A contact is defined as any phone call, letter, or email received by R&P from a customer requesting labor market information or R&P products, as well as any visit to the Labor Market Information or ANSWERS websites.
We have used the Webtrends product for several years to track contacts (visits) made to our LMI website, but only began using it for ANSWERS after ANSWERS first went online in March 2005. R&P did not begin tracking customer contacts made by telephone, letters, or emails until September 2004.
The types of data tracked continued to evolve over the 2005 program year; therefore, the numbers reported do not reflect a complete year of contacts. Because different types of data began to be tracked at different times, the numbers may not always correlate. For example, while customer contacts were tracked beginning in September 2004, the types of customers making the contacts were not tracked until February 2005.
Data show that 81,383 unique visitors (individuals who visited the website at least once) made 161,679 visits to the LMI website during the reporting period. The average length of time spent on each of the 20 pages with the highest number of visits was 37 minutes and 48 seconds.
A review of the most frequently retrieved files shows our customers are very interested in R&P projections (the demand side) as evidenced by the downloading of over 11,000 files related to either Employment Outlook: 2010 or Occupational Outlook: 2010 (see Table 1). High interest in the supply side is demonstrated by the retrieval of approximately 6,000 files from Where Are They Now? Community College Graduates’ Outcomes.
Medical care continues to be a hot-button issue as shown by 1,949 downloads of data regarding the supply of nurses. Not surprisingly, compensation is important to visitors as a total 2,018 files pertaining to employee compensation were retrieved. An unexpected interest was shown in Wage Records research with the downloading of 1,232 Market Dynamics From Administrative Records files.
Although projections and college outcome data are most frequently downloaded, most visitor searches focus on turnover and wages (see Table 2). Perhaps these files are not as readily accessible from our home page or their locations are less intuitive than those of projections and college outcomes.
County Fact Sheets contain data including, but not limited to, the demographics, earnings, and labor force statistics for each county. The five most requested counties are shown in Table 3.
Although ANSWERS only went online March 1, 2005, 1,227 unique visitors visited the site 10,940 times before June 30, 2005. The average amount of time spent on one of the top 20 pages was 12 minutes and 24 seconds. ANSWERS consists of dynamic pages, pages generated from a database using values selected by a visitor. They are created using variables and do not exist anywhere in a static predictable form. Therefore, it is not possible to determine the exact downloaded files or requested data.
In addition to contacts made through our websites, R&P also tracks contacts made through the distribution of our publications and other products. Our monthly publications, Wyoming Labor Force Trends and the news release, have the largest total distribution (see Table 4). Annual publications such as Wages and Benefits in Wyoming also have wide distributions. One of R&P’s newer products are the Occasional Papers, which have experienced increasing popularity with each succeeding issue. Data also show we distributed 355 copies of the college outcomes publication by mail, but more than nine times that were downloaded.
Contacts to R&P are also made via telephone, email, and regular mail by various groups of customers (see Table 5). Customers making these types of contacts are typically seeking one of our products or need assistance with statistical data. Table 6 lists the products or issues related to these requests for information.
R&P will continue tracking the use and distribution of labor market information. The feedback generated will help us understand the needs of our customers and assist us in continuing to provide top quality labor market statistics and products.
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