Understanding and Presenting Online and Web Stats: Showing Impact

+

Understanding & presenting online & web stats – showing IMPACT

Jeff Wisniewski

Web Services Librarian

University of Pittsburgh

+RoadmapImpact

Web statisticsTrendsContent typesGoalsCampaigns

Caveats

Built in visualizations

Trend watch: Real time visualization tools

+Showing impact

(NARRATIVE / CONTEXT) x VISUALIZATION

+Tell the story

With numbers

With text

With compelling visuals

+

Good data visualization tells a story that can be understood by

anyone

The goal is to reduce complexity and give data a human face

+

+Web statistics

+Google analytics

Google analytics as example, so YMMV

+Google analytics

Trends

Content impact: Content types

User experience impact: Goals

Outreach impact: Campaigns

Real Time

+

+The big picture is too big

+IMPACT

Content

User Experience

Outreach

+Content IMPACT

+Different metrics for different contentTime on page:

Engagement content (blogs, guides, reviews): hopefully high

Funnel content (get me to…databases, ejournals, catalog, etc): hopefully very low

Informational content (hours, policies): hopefully low

+How to

Admin > View > Custom Channel Groupings > New Content Grouping

+

+User Experience IMPACT

+Use personas to Identify top tasks by audience

What specific things does Stacey want to do on our site?

Set up GOALS and FUNNELS around these tasks

+ Stacey freshman

the source of the information can come from anywhere and is really irrelevant; she just needs to know where to look

uses often commercial search engines like Yahoo and Google to locate information

she doesn’t distinguish between the online catalog and the library web site; for her, the web site is just the way to get to the catalog with some additional information mixed in

Unaware of library tools and resources

needs help with the research process and is overly-confident about her own research skills, which may not be as strong as she thinks

+ spends a lot of time at the library to study for midterms and finals; wants to be able to check easily what the library hours are

she wants to easily connect to wi-fi and uses self-print for all her assigned readings

does not rely heavily on the library’s print journal collections; commonly uses e-journal collections

uses primarily books on reserve and rarely checks out a book or two from Hillman collection; expects Hillman library to have all the textbooks required by instructors and is surprised if they are not in the collection or are not placed on reserve for students

uses chat or calls the front desk to get help from library staff with locating a reference

uses her smart phone to find the call number of a book on reserve, see if a book is checked out and when is due back, or look up the syllabus, the course number, or the name of the instructor

+Goals

Goal : the page a visitor reaches once they have completed a desired action

Funnel : The (optimized) steps along the way to the goal

+Examples

Can students successfully find and enroll in a class on your site?

After visiting a readers’ advisory page do people click into the catalog to find and checkout items?

Are students clicking from a course libguide into a database that the guide recommends?

+The goal

+

Step 1

Sstep 2

Sstep 3

The funnel

+How to

Admin > Goals > Create New Goal

+

+*PRO TIP

Exact match has to be EXACTLY the same as the URL….even leading or

trailing spaces will cause it to fail

+

+Outreach IMPACT

Campaigns

+Campaigns

Great way to demonstrate the impact (or lack thereof) of specific online outreach

and marketing efforts

+Campaigns

How many library mailing list members clicked the link in the PDF we sent about our new makerspace?

How many people took our annual survey from the link if Facebook versus the link on Twitter?

+Campaigns

Allows for tagging URLs with special parameters

Source- blog, Facebook

Medium- PDF flyer, website

Campaign- new_community_meeting_rooms

+How toutm_source: Identify the advertiser, site, publication, etc. that is sending traffic to your property, e.g. Google, citysearch, newsletter4, billboard.

utm_medium: The advertising or marketing medium, e.g.: cpc, referral, email.

utm_campaign: The individual campaign name, slogan, promo code, etc. for a product.

utm_term: Identify paid search keywords. If you're manually tagging paid keyword campaigns, you should also use utm_term to specify the keyword.

utm_content: Used to differentiate similar content, or links within the same ad. For example, if you have two call-to-action links within the same email message, you can use utm_content and set different values for each so you can tell which version is more effective.

+How to: URL Builder

https://support.Google.com/analytics/answer/1033867?hl=en&ref_topic=1032998

+General web stats caveat

+The bounce rate mythWe link to a LOT of third party sites

from our websites:

Catalogs

Discovery tools

Overdrive

Databases

LibGuides

Book review sites

+The bounce rate myth

A user who visits your homepage and then visits one of these places has

+When the cookie crumbles*

New vs Returning users relies on cookies.

• Up to 66% of users user multiple devices

• App. 30% of users deleted cookies in a one month period

*I stole this title from the comscore article of the same name because I liked it

http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Blog/When_the_Cookie_Crumbles

+Communicating the results

+Key visualizations

+Communicate

With BOTH internal and external stakeholders

+traffic> search> organic

+traffic> search> organic

+Content>Landing pages &exit pages

+Content>Landing pages &exit pages via visitor flow

+Content>top pages

+Content>top pages (in-page analytics)

+Real-Time Visualization Tools

+Trend Watch: Real time visualizations

Gale Analytics on Demand

http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2014/04/research/gale-releases-analytics-demand-demographic-gis-libraries/

create maps, charts, and reports that illustrate where their patrons live, how different demographic groups are utilizing the library, which genres or resources are most popular among different consumer segment

+Trend Watch: Real time visualizations

“Making the Invisible Library Visible”

Checkouts

How many people on the website right now?

http://library.case.edu/ksl/aboutus/assessment/publicwow/

http://www.optiem.com/

+Trend Watch: Real time visualizations

Google Charts

https://developers.Google.com/chart/

Display real-time data from various sources on your website

Wordpress and Drupal pluginshttps://drupal.org/project/google_chart_toolshttps://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-google-cha

rts/

+Questions?

+

Thank you!