Using Site Improve for Analytics

Site improve collects analytics from our site which we can use to better understand how our site is being used. This can help us build sites that are easier for visitors to use and find the information they are looking for.

Login and access analytics data

1. Login to Site Improve at https://my.siteimprove.com. Your username is your UWSA email, but the password is separate from email. If you don't remember your password, use the Forgot Password link, and submit your UWSA email address. You will be sent an email with a link to reset your password. If you get a message that no user with that email address exists, contact the web team to get an account set up. 
2. In the teal header, choose Analytics in the dropdown on the left. 

View analytics just for your group (community site)

You can filter the Analytics module to include only information related to your community site by choosing the group dropdown in the grey header. 

View statistics for a single page

If you are interested in number of visitors and other information about a single page, it is easiest to use the search feature and search by URL. Go to the page you are interested in, and copy the URL from the browser. In Site Improve, on the right side of the menu bar, click the magnifying glass and paste the URL you copied. Choose the page you would like to view. See below for the definitions of the statistics you see.

Control the time range of the analytics

There is a dropdown in the grey header that controls the time range of the data that is displayed. Click the dropdown to choose the time range in which you are interested. You can specify a pre-made time range or choose a custom range. 

Analytics Subsections

Visitors

To review information about the browsers who visit your site, choose the Visitors option from the menu on the left. Choose the Countries option to see the location of the visitors. Hover over a country and choose the big round plus button to drill down into the traffic from the country. You can also drill down into information about a state to see municipalities. 

You can also view the browsers, operating systems and screen resolutions used to visit your site. 

Content

Use the Content section of the site to view information on page views and and exit pages (the first and last pages seen by a visitor). 

Traffic Sources

Traffic sources describes how people get to our site.

Referrers

Referrers describes the way people arrive at our site.

• Direct Traffic: A bookmark, link from a non-browser application or typing in the URL.
• Search Engine: Clicking on a link from a search engine.
• External Referrers: Clicking on a link from a non-wisconsin.edu website.
• Internal Referrers: Clicking on a link from another wisconsin.edu page.

External Search Terms

Although this used to be a useful metric, Site Improve cannot collect search terms when the visitor uses a secure (https) connection to a search engine. This is now the vast majority of searches, so there will be very little data in this section.

Internal Searches

The internal searches section does not currently work on our site.

Behavior

The behavior section gives you a way to see how visitors move through our site. For example, if you want to see how people get to and where they go from your homepage, enter the URL in the Behavior Tracking option. Above your page, you will see the traffic sources for that page. Click on any of the options for more details.

Then, the teal section below the focus page will display where people go from that site. This will help you get an idea about what links on the sit are most used.

Vocabulary

Visits: A visit is the period of time a visitor is on the website within a specific browser. The visit ends when the browser is shut down or closed, or the visitor has been inactive for longer than 30 minutes.

Page Views: How many times the page is accessed during the selected period. A valid visitor seeing the page results in one page view. A single visit can result in multiple page views. The difference between visits and page views reflects how often people come back to this page. 

Unique visitors: The total number of unique visitors during the selected period. 

% Bounce Rate: The bounce rate is calculated from single-page visits (visits where users have only seen one page) divided by the number of entries on that page. 

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