Web Analytics For Open Education Projects - "How To" Guidance Document (Draft)

Analytics for Open Education Projects
Set your data free

This guide contains important information for any open education project reporting to internal and external project stakeholders. This guide has been prepared to introduce the value of web analytics and web metrics for open education projects.
DRAFT Copy: for review purposes only
The information in this guide provides practical, set-by-step guides on how to gather data about your open education projectand how to interpret and analyze that data. It will help you answer questions that will inform the planning and development of your open education website; questions such as: What are the top 10 countries that drive traffic to your open education website? How long do your visitors stay? How did they find your website? Is the number of visitors to your site increasing, decreasing or does it remain consistent?
Alex di Savoia, Lecturer University College Falmouth http://openspace.falmouth.ac.uk October 2012
Contents
Why is web analytics important? ............................................................................................... 3 Resources that accompany this guide ....................................................................................... 4 An introduction to analytics ....................................................................................................... 4 Evaluation ............................................................................................................................. 5 Dissemination ....................................................................................................................... 5 Planning & Development ...................................................................................................... 5 Web analytic tools: Google Analytics (GA)................................................................................. 6 Examples of Practice at University College Falmouth .......................................................... 6 How Google Analytics works ...................................................................................................... 7 Limitations ............................................................................................................................ 7 How do you add Google Analytics to your site? ........................................................................ 8 Google Analytics re-cap ............................................................................................................. 8 Who is visiting your site ........................................................................................................ 8 How people explore your site............................................................................................... 9 What GA wont do ................................................................................................................ 9 Choosing meaningful metrics................................................................................................... 10 How to use metrics to manage and understand your website ............................................ 10 UCF openSpace Case Study ................................................................................................ 10 Project-level metrics ........................................................................................................... 11 Institutional-relevant metrics ............................................................................................. 11 Goal Mapping ..................................................................................................................... 12 A short introduction to data analysis ....................................................................................... 13 Our metrics .............................................................................................................................. 14 Website visits ........................................................................................................................... 15 Unique Page Views............................................................................................................... 20 Visitors ..................................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined. Unique visitors ..................................................................................................................... 22 New Visitors & Returning Visitors ............................................................................................ 24 Bounce Rate ............................................................................................................................. 26 Engagement ............................................................................................................................. 27 Demographic: Top 10 Countries .............................................................................................. 30 Referrers (also known as referring sites) & Traffic sources ..................................................... 32 Keywords.................................................................................................................................. 36 Analytics for Open Education Projects
About this guide

This practical guide is an introduction to understanding and implementing a website analaytic strategy for your open education repository or website. Analytics is the process of collecting, measuring, analysing and interpreting data about visitors to your website, including but not limited to: how they discovered it (discoverability) how long they spent on it (engagement) the number of pages of they viewed (depth of experience) where they come from and your international reach (demographics) how often they return (loyalty) how easily they could navigate around your website (ease of experience) which third party websites send you the most traffic (referrals)
With a focus on non-commercial educational websites, NGOs, charities, not-for-profit and non-profit organisation focused websites will also find this information applicable for their websites. This guide has initially been developed in conjunction with our free Website Analytics for Open Education Projects online course (http://openspace.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/websiteanalytics-open-education-projects). The course is as a flexible, self-paced non-credit bearing learning experience representing approximately 30 hours of study time. This guide and the accompanying curse, is an introductory level course. It will cover the basic principles and practice of collecting, analysing and interpreting data about the visits to your educational or non-profit website.

Set your data free Why is web analytics important?
Analytics for Open Education Projects There is no getting around it marketing is a highly subjective word. Love or it loathe it, open education stands to learn a great deal from a marketing-led approach to online dissemination of OERs. Using the standard tools that marketing professionals use to measure online performance for campaigns, content and websites allows educators to gauge and develop the impact of our learning resources. At its most basic, web analytics (or analytics for short) is a generic term meaning the study of the impact of a website on its users. Analytics is an essential tool in the online marketing professionals arsenal. Its easy to understand why. Web metrics provides genuine insights into the who, what, where, when and how of website visitors data every open education project and resource should have to hand. OER practitioners stand to gain from not only how to promote OERs online like commercial companies and organizations we can also benefit from learning how to measure online success in the same way as marketing professionals. This helps us answer key questions such as: Are our OERs reaching our target audience? Do we understand why we are or arent reaching our intended audience? Are our OERs being discovered online and why (or why not)? Is the site that hosts our OERs easy to navigate? Although its free, is the learning journey clearly mapped out? Is it easily understood? How are people finding our OERs? How long do they engage with them on our website(s)?
Analytics answers these fundamental questionsand many more.
There is a nascent movement advocating the practice of using web analytics to improve the quality of online education. Learning analytics refers to the analysis of a wide range of data produced by and gathered on behalf of learners to track how open education learners engage with our resources, predict future engagement and online learning experiences - and spot potential issues. Through analytics, you gain invaluable insights into your open education learners based on how they're accessing the materials and how they're progressing through their learning experience. OER materials need to be constructed and made available online in a way that you can use analytics to understand what's working and what's not on your OE site.
Definitions
Spreadsheet: A spreadsheet is a document file that contains rows and columns. It is typically used to record and compare data. A popular example is Microsofts Excel spreadsheets.
Resources that accompany this guide

1. An Excel spreadsheet has been provided for you to record set metrics (e.g. the number of visitors to your website). The spreadsheet has been designed to automatically produce charts and graphs for each metrics. The data recording period in this spreadsheet is set to a quarterly (3 month intervals) reporting default. The spreadsheet also calculates percentage change from quarter to quarter for many key metrics. http://www.scribd.com/doc/114433549 2. A web analytics report template is provided in MS Word format. The report has been created for you to easily provide data, graphs and insights into your OER projects usage data. http://www.scribd.com/doc/114433917 3. A free Web Analytics for Open Education Projects tutorial will guide you, step-by-step, through the process of collecting web analytics data. It also provides additional video resources and reading materials which cover various aspects of web analytics, data collection and how to gain insights from what your data is telling you. http://openspace.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/websiteanalytics-open-education-projects
An introduction to analytics
At its most basic, web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of website usage data for the purposes of understanding and optimising users experience of a website. Looking at analytics more broadly, it is a process concerned with more or less answering the following questions, not individually, but holistically: 1. Who is coming to my web site? 2. What are they doing (or better, what are they trying to do)? 3. What is the gap between what they are doing and the intended open education project aims? (and whether we mean
4. 5.
ideal for the organization / institution / business or the customer? This is a very good question!). Think of this as measuring user behavior on your site What are some concrete ways I can close the gaps? How can I get more of my intended audience to visit my site?
Evaluation
As the five questions above illustrate, web analytics is not just a tool for measuring web traffic. It is a process that can be used as a tool: for business and market research, and to assess and improve the effectiveness of a web site to help one in estimating how visitor traffic to a website changes after the launch of a new promotional campaign to provide information about the number of visitors to a website and the number of page views to help gauge traffic and popularity trends which is useful for research and performance monitoring of your website and its content
Dissemination
One of your goals as an open education practitioner is the sharing, re-use and re-purposing of your OERs. Web analytics allows you to see if this goal is being achieved, how its being achieved and what improvements are needed for the user experience. Its a process that will also show how easy it is to discover your website and OERs online as well as how user friendly your website is
Planning & Development

Last, but by no means least, web analytics enable you to set goals. As you begin to monitor the traffic levels arriving at your website, you may decide to set a goal of increasing traffic by 30% from one quarter to another. You may decide that your OERs require a better keyword tagging system to increase their discoverability. Or a redesign of your website or a re-think about the information that is provided to learners arriving at your OE site to better support their learning journey. There is any number of goals you might cite. They will depend on the nature of your OE project and your desired audience. Web analytics is an effective tool and practice which will allow you to create informed goals and decisions regarding your OE website.
Web analytic tools: Google Analytics (GA)

There are a number of good, reliable and free web analytic services available. University College Falmouth and openSpace, its open education repository, use Google Analytics. There are a number of strategic and operational reasons for this decision. On a practical level, GA allows us to collect, analyze and interrogate data from a number of Google platforms we use Google Docs, Google+, Orkut and YouTube- all of which combine to provide invaluable data around user experiences within each of these platforms. It also shows how one platform sends traffic to another and how the public engages with UCFs online content. GA allows us to assess whether the experience we offer visitors to our websites and online spaces is optimal or requires improvement. This raises questions about our learning resources such as: Is our content easy to discover online? Is it easy to access? Is it engaging? Is it interesting and/or useful enough to sustain regular return visits? How many people share out content? How many people discus or recommend our content? Are we keeping visitors interested in what were doing?
Highlights title
text
GA provides the data we need in order to assess these kinds of questions. This is an important distinction to make: Web analytical tools like GA are simply that tools. GA is a tool that provides raw data and we view this data to gain insights. These insights come from analyzing the data produced. The data will show if visitors, for instance, steadily increase, decrease, remains stable or fluctuates wildly from one point in time to the next. It is up to us to assess the reasons behind visitor activity.
Examples of Practice at University College Falmouth

1. We monitor the number of visitors to our openSpace repository after every press release or news announcement to see if visitor numbers increased and if they spent longer on the site. This allows us to assess if our strategy of using press releases is effective. 2. A course leader in Chile might decide to use OERs from one of our online courses in his or her teaching practice. We might look at the visitor data to see if there were more users arriving from Chile to assess the engagement of this course leaders students.
3. We might also note a spike or quick upturn in traffic from Australia. In turn, we might investigate ways of forming learning partnerships or a targeted promotional campaign within Australia based on the upsurge of visitors from this country. Understanding web analytics, and developing a practice of analyzing and interpreting the data services like GA, provide can create opportunities for providers of OERs.
How Google Analytics works

Google Analytics works by the inclusion of a special code called JavaScript on pages in your website. When visitors to your website view a page, this JavaScript code references a JavaScript file which then executes the tracking operation for Analytics when there is a visit to your website. The tracking operation retrieves data about the page request through various means and sends this information to the Analytics. The data compiled by Google Analytics is anonymous. This means you cannot collect names, addresses, email addresses or other personal details about your websites visitors via GA. GA will, however, provide information about what country a visitor is resident within, what device they used to access your site (computer, tablet, mobile phone, etc), what web browser they used, how long they stayed on your site, what pages they viewed, what content they downloaded, and similar anonymous data. This information is provided in the form of a cookie, a type of virtual document file that logs anonymous information about a user and their engagement with your site.
Definitions
Limitations
It is worth noting that not every visitor can be tracked, and not all types of interaction can be recorded with the basic installation of GA. And the reasons for these limitations are caused by the internal workings of GA itself. For instance, GA is powered by Javascript code, which can be turned on or off via a users web browser preferences. If a user has the Javascript option turned off, very little information will be collected about their visit to your site or their overall experience. Internet users can also choose to disable cookies, which results in little information being collected about their visit to your site. For more detailed information about how GA works, please visit the Web analytics for Open Education Websites course area on the openSpace website: http://openspace.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/website-analyticsopen-education-projects
It contains the address of the Web site you have visited and codes that your browser sends back to the Web site each time you visit a page there. Cookies from reputable websites don't usually contain personal information or anything dangerous.
Cookie: A cookie is a type of digital file that is stored on your computer.
How do you add Google Analytics to your site?

Sign up using a free Google Mail account. www.gmail.com Create a website profile - www.google.com/analytics Add the tracking code that Google generates to your website pages. In the footer file of your site (if applicable) This requires basic access to the html code of your site. "Check status" - Google will let you know whether or not the tracking code was installed on your site successfully.
Definitions
SEO: Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine results. In general, the more highly your page is (appearing at the top of search engine results), and the more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine's users.
In order to install the code, you will need administrative access to your website. If you dont have admin permissions for your site, you will need to contact your websites administrator and/or webmaster. If analytics is already installed on your site, you will need to liaise with your websites administrator and/or webmaster to have readonly access to analytic data reports. Alternatively, s/he can send you analytical data reports. You will need to discuss the information you require and the best format to receive the data in. These options will depend upon your institutions guidelines, policies and procedures.
Google Analytics re-cap

Google Analytics shows you how people found your site, how they explored it, and how you can enhance their visitor experience. GA will tell you:
Who is visiting your site

New visitors Repeat visitors Geolocation Visualization: See where your visitors live Browser, Platform, Screen resolution, Internet connection Where did they come from? (refereeing sites, search engines, keywords) Measure the success of partnerships, SEO
How people explore your site

Page views Page views per visit Time spent on your site Bounce rate how many of your visitors viewed just one page on your site before leaving to visit another site? Top Content - See where people are going. Filter your results to see individual pages or sections of your website. Site Search - Non-intrusive way of finding out what visitors are looking for on your site. Navigation summary - What page did they come from, where did they go next on your site Historical trending - Compare past date ranges to see how your website is trending
What GA wont do
Analytics for Open Education Projects GA is an effective tool for the many reasons outlined in the introductory parts of this guide. However, as with all tools, it does have its limitations. There is information that GA will not provide, such as: The names of your visitors Email addresses Postal addresses Other personal contact details from your websites visitors
Choosing meaningful metrics
How to use metrics to manage and understand your website

What should you measure? How do you measure it? What do you do with the data once you have it?
Like many web analytics tools, GA offers a wide range of metrics to report on. This is where understanding what goals you wish to achieve through your open education website or OER project becomes invaluable. Your goals will readily help you identify what would be meaningful data to report on.
UCF openSpace Case Study

openSpace is fairly typical of open education projects in this regard. Measuring revenue raised through this website isnt applicable due to the fact that all of the content on it is free so this rules out a number of GA metric data we could collect. We dont promote openSpace via paid online advertising, so there is no need for us to collect data around Google AdWords or other paid online advertising options.
10
So how do we determine the metrics we would report on? We identified who was most likely to be interested in our OERS We worked out an online strategy to reach our intended audience Clearly identified our OER project aims and outcomes Recognized and supported institutional goals and strategies
Project-level metrics
At a project-level, based on our defined project goals, we selected the following metrics to report on: Traffic statistics & user experience o General website visits o The number of page views o How many unique visitors visit the site o How many new visitors come to the site o How many return visitors come back to the site o How many visitors only view one page before leaving the site (bounce rate) Demographic statistics o The top 10 countries that account for the overall number of visits and visitors to the site o How long these visitors stay on the site What sites sent our website the most traffic o Traffic sources what are the top sites that send us traffic o Traffic breakdown Direct traffic (saved our url in their browser as a favorite or clicked a link provided in an email, newsletter, etc) Organic traffic (discovered our site via a web browser search) Referral traffic (came from a third party website, blog, etc).
Institutional-relevant metrics
At an institutional-level, we selected the following metrics to report on: Demographic statistics (see above) how does our project fit into UCFs internalization strategy? Deeper engagement with UCF Do visitors to our repository go on to seek further course information on the
11
UCF website? How much traffic does openSpace send to the UCF website? Collaboration, outreach, re-use & re-purposing with other Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are other HEIs accessing and using our OERS? Raising aspirations /widening participation for higher education (GA wont provide data for this metric. However, from the data, inferences can be made) Are we being social how much traffic is driven to openSpace via social networking services? Understanding our aims and goals has informed our decision about which metrics to choose from a staggering array of metrics available via GA. The metrics weve chosen will be among the more popular metrics for any open education project and website. Analytics for Open Education Projects
Goal Mapping
The metrics outlined in this document are amongst the most accessible and easily understood. Once you have built your web analytics practice, gain confidence in the gathering and reporting of this data, and further explore the various data options available through services like GA, you can expand upon the metrics you choose to report for your own open education website.
12
A short introduction to data analysis

Now that you have collected your data, your next task is to turn raw numbers and percentages into meaningful information. This is the process of analysis.
How to do analysis
Ask : Why? and Why not? to changes in variables and results Ask: How do users actually do X (e.g. navigate around a website) compared to how we think they will do it? Ask: Who are my users and are they all the same? Establish a process for utilizing data to identify any issues, problems and recommend solutions. Establish a process for assessing the strengths and weakness of your site Be sure the metrics you report are tied to project and organizational goals as well as internal and external stakeholders. Focus on actionable data. Avoid data overload.
This process approach will enable you to prioritise initiatives based on impact. For instance, is traffic to your site lower than expected? This probably indicates that your OERs are difficult to find online. Search engine optimsation, online promotion, a press release are options you can choose to enhance the discoverability of your OERs and open education website. Do most of your visitors leave after viewing only the page they landed on in your site? This might indicate a mismatch between visitor expectations and the content that is actually on the page they visited. The information on the page might be confusing or the site itself isnt attractive or user friendly. The same questions can be asked if, overall, the majority of your sites visitors spend a very short time (a minute or less) on your site. Well address analysis as we step through how to collect reporting data.
13
Collecting the Data

So now that weve introduced web analytics, and Google analytics in particular, and how to choose meaningful metrics for your open education website, its time for us to turn our attention to collecting the data
Our metrics
Analytics for Open Education Projects This guide will step you through how to collect the following data and report on the following web analytic metrics: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Website visits Page views and Unique page views Visitor statistics (new visitors, returning visitors and unique visitors) Bounce rates Time on site Visitor country of origin Traffic sources Referral traffic Keywords
14
Website visits
What Are Website Visits?

Analytics for Open Education Projects Google Analytics measures both visits and visitors to your site. There is an important distinction to make between these two metrics, which is outlined in the right-hand column. When you sign in to Google Analytics, youll see your accounts homepage which lists the website you or your institution has set up with Google Analytics.
Visits represent the number of times your website was visited during a 24 hour period. A Visitor is someone who arrived at your site in a 24 hours period. A visitor may return to your site more than once during a 24 hour period. So while a visitor may be counted once during this period, GA will record all of their visits to your site. Hence the number of visitors and site visits wont be the same. Typically, the number of visits will be larger than the number of visitors this is due to repeat visits from a number of visitors over a 24 hour period.
Once you click on the website youre interested in, you will be taken to the Visitors Overview page (please refer to the image at the top of this page), otherwise referred to as the Dashboard. This gives you a snapshot of your websites statistics for the last 30 days, including the following: Visits: The total number of visits to your site. Visits represent the number of individual sessions that visitors have made to your site. For example, if a visitor leaves your website and returns again later, it is counted as two visits.
15
Select your reporting date range

1. To select a date range, click the arrow next to the existing date range to open the selector. Once you've selected a new date range, click Apply to update your report.
2. To use a predefined date range, select one of the following from the Date Range menu: a. Today: Data available for the current calendar date up until the time of your selection b. Yesterday: Data for the previous calendar date c. Last Week: Data for Sunday through Saturday of the previous calendar week
d. Last Month: Data for the first to last day of the previous calendar month 3. To set you own dates, select Custom from the Date Range menu, then follow the instructions below. 4. To select a single date a. Click any date on the calendar. b. Enter a single date (in mm/dd/yyyy format) in both Date Range fields. 5. To select a specific week a. Click the first and last days of the week on the calendar. b. Enter the beginning and end dates (in mm/dd/yyyy format) in the Date Range fields.
16
6. To select a range of dates (this will be the most applicable option for your reporting requirements) a. In the calendar, click the desired start date, then click the end date. The selected days are highlighted. You can also enter start and end dates in the Date Range fields, using the mm/dd/yyyy format.
b.
Remember, once you've selected a new date range, click Apply. One you have selected your date range, this date range will be applied to all of the metrics you review during your Google Analytics session.
How to record this data:

1. Select your reporting date range as per the instructions above 2. If you havent done so already, open the accompanying Website Analytics Data Spreadsheet 3. Go to the Traffic Stats tab, which is displayed at the bottom of the spreadsheet 4. Enter the number of visitors in the corresponding reporting Quarter (e.g. Q1, Q2, Q3 or Q4) please see below for an example. Analytics for Open Education Projects
5. When you enter your data, the graph that accompanies this metric will automatically populate with data:
17
6. If Google Analytics has been activated on your website for more than a few months, you can see how your Visits traffic has changed from one quarter to another. You may decide to gather your current quarters data at the same time and then go on to collect your previous quarters data separately (if available). This approach minimizes the risks of reporting incorrect data between two different quarters. a. Select the date range corresponding to the previous reporting quarter as per the instructions given on Page 16, Selecting Your Reporting Date Range. b. This new date range will provide you with data for previous quarters Analytics for Open Education Projects c. Go to the Website Analytics Data Spreadsheet
d. Go to the Traffic Stats tab, which is displayed at the bottom of the spreadsheet e. Enter the current quarters results in the new quarter cell highlighted in light grey. f. Enter the previous quarters Visitors data in the previous quarter cell also highlighted in light grey.
g. The %Change between the two quarters will automatically be calculated. If there has been a decrease in this metrics, the formulae will illustrate this with a minus sign (e.g. -7.50%) Note: If Google Analytics has recently been set up on your website, it can only provide data from the date it was activated on your website. Google Analytics cannot provide data for the period prior to installation. However, if Google Analytics was installed on your website when it was launched, and this is the first time you have accessed the data, you can gather data from previous monthly quarters by adjusting the reporting timeframe
18
Page Views
Like Visits, this metric is easily located on your Google Analytics Audience Overview page.
What Are Page views?

Page views represents the number of times visitors to your site have looked at your pages. Every time a visitor loads one of your pages, a page view is counted.

1. Ensure that your reportingtime frame hasnt changed, and is the same time period for the data collected for your Visits data. 2. Go to the Website Analytics Data Spreadsheet 3. Go to the Traffic Stats tab, which is displayed at the bottom of the spreadsheet 4. Enter the number of page views in the corresponding reporting Quarter (e.g. Q1, Q2, Q3 or Q4) please see below for an example.
When you enter your data, the graph that accompanies this metric will automatically populate with data. As with Page Views, the Website Analytics Data Spreadsheet provides a %Change calculator for this metric, measuring the change in Page Views between the current and previous reporting quarters.
19
Unique Page Views

We have set up the Website Analytics Data Spreadsheet template for you to capture and record Page Views and Unique Page Views data together. The reason for this is to compare the proportion of Unique Page Views against the overall total Page Views in any given quarter. GA allows you to review both the total page views and unique page views for your site and can help you clarify who is visiting your site and how often.
What Are Unique Page views?

Unique page views is a subset of your total page views. This will tend to be lower than your total page views. This metric represents the number of individual visitors who have reviewed your pages. Each visitor to your site is counted only once, no matter how many pages s/he opens.

1. Ensure that your reportingtime frame hasnt changed, and is the same time period for the data collected for your Visits data. 2. From the left-hand column navigation, the link for Content Overview 3. Step 2 will load the Content Overview summary page. You will find the data for your unique page views here (see below).
4. Go to the Website Analytics Data Spreadsheet 5. Go to the Traffic Stats tab, which is displayed at the bottom of the spreadsheet 6. Enter the number of unique page views in the corresponding reporting Quarter (e.g. Q1, Q2, Q3 or Q4) please see below for an example.
20
When you enter your data, the graph that accompanies this metric will automatically populate with data. As with Page Views, the Website Analytics Data Spreadsheet provides a %Change calculator for this metric, measuring the change in Unique Page Views between the current and previous reporting quarters.
Visits
As a standalone metric, this isnt the most robust or meaningful. It will allow you to measure the ebb and flow of overall visits to your site. It will highlight whether visits to your site have increased, decreased or remained constant over time. This metric gains value when compared with other metrics such as Unique Visitors, New Visitors and Returning Visitors. In other words, it forms a basis for analyzing visitor activity on your site. This metric is easily located on your Google Analytics Overview page. Youve already recorded this data it was the first data set you recorded. Please add the same figure for this section. In case you havent reported this data:
What Are Highlights title Visitors?

text A visitor is the equivalent of someone arriving at your website who starts looking at pages.

1. To return to the Audience Overview page, from the navigation menu in the left hand column, click on the Overview link beneath the Audience heading. 2. The data you require for this metric can be found on this page (see the image below):
3. Ensure that your reporting time frame hasnt changed, and is the same time period for the data collected for your Visits data.
21
4. Go to the Website Analytics Data Spreadsheet 5. Go to the Traffic Stats tab, which is displayed at the bottom of the spreadsheet 6. Enter the number of visits in the Visitors section for the corresponding reporting Quarter (e.g. Q1, Q2, Q3 or Q4). When you enter your data, the graph that accompanies this metric will automatically populate with data.
What Are Definitions Unique Page Unique Visitors: The unique Visitors? views? visitor
metric page the The unique visitor Uniquecountsviews is number of your total metric counts the a subset of distinct people of distinct numberwho This will page views. visited your to be lower people who have tend website in a particular time visited your website than your total page period, usually one in a particular time views. This metric day. period, usually represents the one day. number of individual visitors who have reviewed your pages. Each visitor to your site is counted only once, no matter how many pages s/he opens.
Analytics for Open Education Projects A %Change calculator hasnt been provided for this metric. However, you can use the %Change calculators for other metrics to measure this change should you wish to.
Unique Visitors
Unique visitors
A unique visitor can contain many visits, each containing many page views. This is still one of the best metrics to use for your website as it tells you the amount of different people that are visiting your website on a daily basis. This is a great indicator of a sites popularity and discoverability online.

1. This data is available from the Audience Overview page. In case youve navigated away from this page, from the navigation menu in the left hand column, click on the Overview link beneath the Audience heading. 2. The data you require for this metric can be found on this page (see the image to the right):
22
3. Ensure that your reporting time frame hasnt changed, and is the same time period for the data collected for your Visits data. 4. Go to the Website Analytics Data Spreadsheet 5. Enter your data in the Unique visitors section of the spreadsheet.
A %Change calculator hasnt been provided for this metric. However, you can use the %Change calculators for other metrics to measure this change should you wish to.
23
New Visitors & Returning Visitors

New Visitors & Returning Visitors
These metrics are fairly self-explanatory. Of the two, Returning Visitors is another great metric to use. It is a great indicator of the quality of your website. Simply put, the more visitors return, the better a website is likely to be. Therefore, you should try and get your repeat visits as high as possible. The higher the percent of repeat visits versus first time visits is another great indicator to use for site quality.

Analytics for Open Education Projects 1. Ensure that your reporting time frame hasnt changed, and is the same time period for the data collected for your Visits data. From the left-hand column navigation column, click Behavior link, which can be found beneath the Audience heading.
2.
3.
This will reveal a sub-navigation menu. From the sub-navigation menu, click the New vs Returning link.
This page will provide you with the data you need to enter into the accompanying spreadsheet (see the image below):
24
4. Go to the Website Analytics Data Spreadsheet 5. Go to the Traffic Stats tab, which is displayed at the bottom of the spreadsheet 6. Enter the number of visits in the corresponding part of the Visitors section for the corresponding reporting Quarter (e.g. Q1, Q2, Q3 or Q4).
What Are Unique Page views?

Unique page views is a subset of your total page views. This will tend to be lower than your total page views. This metric represents the number of individual visitors who have reviewed your pages. Each visitor to your site is counted only once, no matter how many pages s/he opens.
Enter your data within the Vistors section in the spreadsheet that accompanies this guide. When you enter your data, the graph that accompanies this metric will automatically populate with data. A %Change calculator hasnt been provided for this metric. However, you can use the %Change calculators for other metrics to measure this change should you wish to.
25
Bounce Rate
This is one of the most under-used, but most revealing metrics. To put it simply, it indicates the amount of people that, upon arriving at your website, immediately leave. Therefore, its an important indicator of the quality of a website. A bounce rate below 40% for pages is considered good. This is the overall bounce rate for a website. The free website analytics course on openSpace (http://openspace.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/website-analytics-openeducation-projects) shows how individual website pages also have bounce rates as well as other metrics such as Referral Traffic, Keywords and Country/Territory.
What is a Bounce Rate? Bounce Rate is the percentage of singlepage visits from entrance page visits for individual pages.

1. This data is available from the Audience Overview page. From the navigation menu in the left hand column, click on the Overview link beneath the Audience heading. The data you require for this metric can be found on this page (see the image to the right).
2.
3.
Ensure that your reporting time frame hasnt changed, and is the same time period for the data collected for your Visits data.
4. Go to the Website Analytics Data Spreadsheet 7. Go to the Traffic Stats tab, which is displayed at the bottom of the spreadsheet Enter the Bounce Rate number in the corresponding part of the Bounce Rate section for the corresponding reporting Quarter (e.g. Q1, Q2, Q3 or Q4).
5.
26
When you enter your data, the graph that accompanies this metric will automatically populate with data. As with other metrics, the Website Analytics Data Spreadsheet provides a %Change calculator for this metric, measuring the change in Unique Page Views between the current and previous reporting quarters.
Engagement
Engagement is a metric which measures the duration of visits to your site. GA provides other metrics which measure visit duration (for instance, the Average Visit Duration metric which is accessed via the main Audience Overview page). However, the Engagement metric breaks down site visits into distinct time bands, providing a deeper analysis of how long visitors remain on your site. The Engagement metric indicates the amount of time a visitor spends on your website and pages. Its an excellent indicator of the quality of your website, especially open education related websites. The longer the visitors spend on your site, usually, the better. However, if a significant number of visitors are spending a long time on your site, this can be an indicator of a bad website experience people cant find what they are looking for. Its best to combine this metric with the Bounce Rate, Page Views and perhaps the Average Visit Duration to get a more accurate picture of the quality of your website content. For instance, if the majority of your visitors are spending more than 10 minutes on your site, viewing on average more than 5 pages and there is a bounce rate greater than 50%, the combination of these metrics would suggest a difficulty in finding relevant content and hence, a poor visitor experience. We will address examples like this towards the end of this guide. As with Bounce Rate, the engagement metrics is measured at the Pageview, Keyword, Geography metric level. The free website analytics course on openSpace (http://openspace.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/website-analytics-openeducation-projects) covers this in more depth.
Highlights title
text
27

1. Ensure that your reporting time frame hasnt changed, and is the same time period for the data collected for your Visits data. From the left-hand column navigation column, click Behavior link, which can be found beneath the Audience heading.
2.
Highlights title
text
3. This will reveal a sub-navigation menu. From the subnavigation menu, click the Engagement link.
4. Go to the Website Analytics Data Spreadsheet
28
5. Go to the Demographics tab, which is displayed at the bottom of the spreadsheet Enter the number of visits in the corresponding part of the Visitors section for the corresponding reporting Quarter (e.g. Q1, Q2, Q3 or Q4).
When you enter your data, the graph that accompanies this metric will automatically populate with data. Analytics for Open Education Projects
29
Demographic: Top 10 Countries

Geographic location is a key metric that is often missed during the ongoing analysis and optimization of a website. This metric provides very useful insights since it allows you to measure the nationalities which send the majority of visits to your website. It is important to know your audience, and for that matter, understanding which countries send your site the majority of its traffic. Once you know the leading countries that you visitors come from, you can adjust your site, content and/or navigation to specific countries. This adjustment process is commonly referred to as optimization. Optimisation can increase the interest of your visitors, improving their experience on your site and contributing to its overall success Analytics for Open Education Projects If you are expecting your traffic to come from Africa, but instead it comes from Ireland, this metric will show you that you arent reaching you intended audience. There are a variety of geography-based metrics which can be measured through GA. Here are a few: Continent Sub continent Country Region City
For our purposes, the Country metric provides the level of data were interested in monitoring for our openSpace project.

1. Ensure that your reporting time frame hasnt changed, and is the same time period for the data collected for your Visits data. 2. From the left-hand column navigation column, clickthe Demographic link, which can be found beneath the Audience heading.
30
3. This will reveal a sub-navigation menu. From the sub-navigation menu, click the Location link.
.
4. Go to the Website Analytics Data Spreadsheet 5. Go to the Demographics tab, which is displayed at the bottom of the spreadsheet Enter the number of visits from your Top 10 countries in the corresponding part of the Demographics section for the corresponding reporting Quarter (e.g. Q1, Q2, Q3 or Q4).
When you enter your data, the graph that accompanies this metric will automatically populate with data. A %Change calculator hasnt been provided for this metric.
31
Referrers (also known as referring sites) & Traffic sources

This metric shows you where your visitors are coming from. This is a fundamentally important metric that will enable you to analyse and assess whether you have the right mix of external sites driving traffic to your site. Its also a good measure of popularity adding a link to your site is like receiving an endorsement. This metric will also inform you about the amount of traffic you receive from social networking sites and search engines.
What Are Referrers?

The Referrers metric tells you the third party websites where people are finding links to your website and visiting from. Think of this as traffic generators the online places that drive traffic to your website.
Understanding where your traffic comes from will enable you to develop strategies to gain even more traffic from those sites. Or to highlight traffic sources that should be driving traffic to your website and arent. For example, if you notice that youre getting a lot of returning visitors from a well-known blogger, you could develop that relationship into a partnership.
Traffic Sources Overview Page

The Traffic Sources Overview page shows a summary view of all of the traffic coming into your website. There are four main sources of traffic that Google Analytics uses to define and categorize incoming visits. By clicking on any of the categories in your report, you will be able to view breakdowns of the information. 1. Direct Traffic: This is traffic that comes to your site by typing your URL directly into a browser, by clicking on a bookmark (also known as a favorite) saved in your preferred web browser (Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, etc), email marketing campaigns, or by other means where it appears that someone is typing your domain directly into the browser. 2. Referring Sites: This refers to external sites that hosted a link to your site which a visitor clicked in order to arrive at your website. 3. Search Engines: This refers to visits from people who visited your site from a search engine result page. All search engines (Google, Yahoo!, Bing, Ask, etc.) are included in this statistic, not just Google. This would also include paid search advertising like Google AdWords. 4. Other: This is a catch-all category that contains any source that does not fall into any of the previous categories. Many sites will not have much Other traffic, and if you are new to Google Analytics this category is usually insignificant.
32
Traffic Sources Broken Down

When it comes to Traffic sources, there are additional levels of information to most of the statistics that you will see. On the Traffic Sources Overview page, you will see a list of traffic sources at the bottom of the page. If you click view full report you can see all of your sources. For each of your sources, you will see a medium to the right. These mediums are three sources that come up again and again, and knowing what these sources are means can gather important and substantial information about your sites performance and discoverability online. Once you learn where the traffic to your site is coming from, you can analyse the data to make intelligent decisions for you website. Using the [referral] medium, you can tell which sites have been the most effective at driving traffic to your site and which ones have not. Analytics for Open Education Projects 1. [(direct) / (none)]: This is direct traffic that is coming in your site. This includes visitors who typed your URL directly into their browsers, clicked on the link from their favorites/bookmarks, used untagged links with emails, or used links from documents that dont include tracking variables (such as Word documents or PDFs). 2. [referral]: Visitors were referred by links on other web pages. 3. [organic]: Visitors were referred by an unpaid search engine listing.

1. Ensure that your reporting time frame hasnt changed, and is the same time period for the data collected for your Visits data. 2. From the left-hand column navigation column, click the Traffic Sources link. From the sub-menu, click on the Overview link.
33
3. The information for the Traffic Sources cells in the accompanying spreadsheet can be found on this page.
Highlights title
4. Go to the Website Analytics Data Spreadsheet 5. Go to the Demographics tab, which is displayed at the bottom of the spreadsheet 6. Enter the Traffic Sources data in the corresponding part of the Bounce Rate section for the corresponding reporting Quarter (e.g. Q1, Q2, Q3 or Q4).
text
Please note that Traffic source data needs to be entered in percentage format: for instance, 32.59% would be entered as 0.3259. 7. When you enter your data, the graph that accompanies this metric will automatically populate with data. A %Change calculator hasnt been provided for this metric. 8. Return to Google Analytics, remaining on the same page which provided your traffic sources data. 9. Click on the Referrals link from the Traffic sources sub-menu on the left hand column menu.
34
The information for the Referrals cells in the accompanying spreadsheet can be found on this page.
10. 11.
Return to the Website Analytics Data Spreadsheet Go to the Demographics tab, which is displayed at the bottom of the spreadsheet Enter the Referrals data in the corresponding part of the Top Referrals section for the corresponding reporting Quarter (e.g. Q1, Q2, Q3 or Q4). Analytics for Open Education Projects
12.
13.
35
Keywords
This is another fundamentally important metric to understand and measure. Its basically a more in-depth version of the top search engines metric. This report will help you write better content using words that your visitors use to find websites related to yours by subject matter and/or content. Using the right mix of popular search keywords enhances the discoverability of your website and its individual pages - so they will rank even higher in search engines. Picking the right keywords is the cornerstone to successfully promoting your website online. Pick the right ones and your website will benefit from the traffic it needs. Pick the wrong ones and your website might be virtually impossible to find on search engine results. Do some research on keywords related to your website, and see how your top keywords compare. If you arent getting many visits from top keywords that other websites related to you are receiving, its time to spend time on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) to improve the keywords you use on all of you websites pages. Google offers an excellent free guide to SEO, which can be downloaded via: Googles Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide. There are also a myriad of excellent How To SEO videos and tutorials available on YouTube.
What are Highlights title Keywords?

text Keywords are the words or phrases people type into search engines like Bing or Google in order to discover or find content on the internet. This metric tells you the top, or most frequently used, keywords that people type into search engines, which suggest websites people might like to visit based upon the search phrase entered.

1. Ensure that your reporting time frame hasnt changed, and is the same time period for the data collected for your Visits data. From the left-hand column navigation column, click the Traffic Sources link. From the sub-menu, click on the Overview link.
2.
36
3.
The information for the Keywords cells in the accompanying spreadsheet can be found on this page:
.
4. 5. Go to the Website Analytics Data Spreadsheet Go to the Demographics tab, which is displayed at the bottom of the spreadsheet Analytics for Open Education Projects
Highlights title
text
37
6.
Enter the Keyword data in the corresponding part of the Bounce Rate section for the corresponding reporting Quarter (e.g. Q1, Q2, Q3 or Q4).
7.
Summary
Through monitoring key metrics that measure the performance of websites, you should be able to measure the success of your websites performance. You will gain an understanding of its strengths and weakness; identifying any areas of performance which require improving. Upon reading this guide, you should have: an understanding of Google Analytics, metrics and website analysis - and an understanding of why they are important an understanding of audience: who is your open education website for? How to evaluate and set goals for your website the confidence to investigate other metrics for your website through Google Analytics an understanding of key metric terminology an understanding of why the metrics chosen will benefit your website the ability to interpret and communicate with others about these metrics and the their implications for your website in simple everyday terms an understanding of how to compile a report covering the performance of your open education related website
38

Web Analytics For Open Education Projects - "How To" Guidance Document (Draft)

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Web Analytics For Open Education Projects - "How To" Guidance Document (Draft)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Analytics for Open Education Projects

Set your data free

DRAFT Copy: for review purposes only

Alex di Savoia, Lecturer University College Falmouth http://openspace.falmouth.ac.uk October 2012

About this guide

Analytics for Open Education Projects

Analytics for Open Education Projects

Analytics answers these fundamental questionsand many more.

Resources that accompany this guide

Analytics for Open Education Projects

Planning & Development

Analytics for Open Education Projects

Web analytic tools: Google Analytics (GA)

Analytics for Open Education Projects

Examples of Practice at University College Falmouth

How Google Analytics works

Analytics for Open Education Projects

Cookie: A cookie is a type of digital file that is stored on your computer.

How do you add Google Analytics to your site?

Google Analytics re-cap

Who is visiting your site

How people explore your site

Choosing meaningful metrics

Analytics for Open Education Projects

How to use metrics to manage and understand your website

UCF openSpace Case Study

Analytics for Open Education Projects

A short introduction to data analysis

Analytics for Open Education Projects

Collecting the Data

What Are Website Visits?

Select your reporting date range

Analytics for Open Education Projects

How to record this data:

What Are Page views?

How to record this data:

Analytics for Open Education Projects

Unique Page Views

What Are Unique Page views?

How to record this data:

What Are Highlights title Visitors?

How to record this data:

Analytics for Open Education Projects

How to record this data:

Analytics for Open Education Projects

New Visitors & Returning Visitors

How to record this data:

What Are Unique Page views?

Analytics for Open Education Projects

How to record this data:

Analytics for Open Education Projects

How to record this data:

Analytics for Open Education Projects

4. Go to the Website Analytics Data Spreadsheet

Demographic: Top 10 Countries

How to record this data:

Analytics for Open Education Projects

Referrers (also known as referring sites) & Traffic sources

What Are Referrers?

Analytics for Open Education Projects

Traffic Sources Overview Page

Traffic Sources Broken Down

How to record this data: