Usage statistics

Google Analytics screenshot

There are two types of usage reports available - basic log file statistics and more advanced reporting using Google Analytics.

Basic statistics

Basic reports are available for all departmental websites. These reports include a listing of the top 50 most visited pages, and the top 20 referring sites.

You can access these reports from the Usage Statistics Report Index.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics provides much more accurate and detailed information about the behaviour of our website visitors than the current usage statistics.

In order for pages to be tracked by Google Analytics, a small piece of code needs to be added to each page. If you're using the Web CMS, this code will automatically  be included on your site.  The code can also easily be added to pages that are using the Dreamweaver template. It can however be very time consuming to add the code to pages that are not yet using the template.

Once the code has been added to your site, you'll be able to receive reports.

You will be emailed a report once a month, which will include information about the visitors to your site, and the content they view.

If you are interested in using Google Analytics for your website, please contact us.

Sample Google Analytics report

Once a site is configured to use Google Analytics, reports can be sent to the site owner on a regular basis.

If you're interested in what is available or need help interpreting what the report means, see our Annotated Google Analytics report (PDF , 227kb)

Report glossary

Google Analytics reports are full of detail but some of the terminology may be unfamiliar. The following describe some common terms used in Analytics reports:

Visits and visitors

A visit is recorded every time somebody comes to the site to view one or more pages of content. If the visitor leaves the site for at least 30 minutes, the next time that they visit at the site will be counted as a new visit. If they leave the site but come back within 30 minutes, it will be counted as part of the same visit.

No matter how many times somebody visits the site, they will be counted as the same visitor.

Page views

A page view is recorded every time a page is viewed in a web browser.

Unique page views are the total number of unique pages viewed by visitors.

For example, if John views a page ten times during a visit to the site, this would count as ten page views and one unique view. If Paul views the same page five times, this would count as five page views and one unique view. This gives a total of 15 page views and two unique views.

Average page views is the mean average number of pages viewed during a visit.

Time on site

The average time spent on the site by visitors. This figure should be taken with a pinch of salt as it can be skewed by visitors leaving their browser open while they are away from their computer.

Bounce rate

A bounce occurs when a visitor arrives at your site, looks at one page only, and then leaves the site straight away.

The bounce rate is the percentage of visits where a bounce occurred.

A high bounce rate can mean that your pages are not relevant to the visitors you are attracting. For example, the title of a page might not accurately reflect the content of the page, so visitors arriving via a search engine may be expecting to see something else.

Bounces can also occur if your page doesn't have clear links to other related content. If a visitor comes to a page and can't see any links to follow, they will have reached a 'dead end' and have no choice but to go back to the search engine they came from.

Landing pages

Landing pages are the pages where your visitors began their visit. These are usually the pages that visitors arrive at via search engines. You should make sure that it is easy to get to your most important content from these landing pages.

 

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