RWELS: A Remote Web Event Logging System

Event logs are an important data source for identifying usability problems in websites. We present a web-based client-server application, Remote Web Event Logging System (RWELS), for logging user-interface events generated in the Microsoft Internet Explorer during a user's interaction with the pages of a website. RWELS logs events without interfering with the user's interaction — no additional interaction is required on part of a user to enable logging. RWELS is configurable and allows user-centric event logging. A usability analyst can choose the set of events to be captured and the pages of the website to be logged for a particular user. The event logs are dispatched through HTTP to the server where they are stored as text files. Users are identified uniquely and the event logs are associated with the user sessions.