Website Analytics

• Total Users: The number of unique user IDs that triggered some type of event (an interaction with your page).
• User Engagement: The length of time that your page was in the foreground of a user's screen, or your webpage was active.
• Average Time Per User: The total length of time users were on your page (user engagement), divided by the total number of users. This gives you an idea of how long an average user stays on your page or site.
• Engagement Rate: The percentage of users who stayed on a page 10 seconds or longer, clicked a link, downloaded a file, or visited another page on the site.
• Bounce Rate: This is the percentage of users who arrived on a specific page and left your site without visiting another page or staying on the page for more than 10 seconds. A high bounce rate isn’t necessarily bad; it could be that they came to your site looking for specific information, found it, and left happy. Our goal, though, is to encourage them to browse related content.

• Page Path: The part of the URL that comes after https://extension.illinois.edu.
• Views/Page Views: The number of times your page loads. Repeated views by the same screen user may be counted multiple times within a single session.
• Session: A session includes all the pages a user visits in a single session and all user activity (clicking a link, downloading a file). After 30 minutes of inactivity on your site, the session ends. If the user returns to the site later, it’s a new session.
• Engaged Sessions: The number of sessions where users stayed on a page 10 seconds or longer, clicked a link, downloaded a file, or visited another page on the site.
• Session Start: The number of sessions that began on that specific page.
• First Visit: The very first page an identified user visited any page on the Extension website, assuming they did not mask their viewing history.
• Event: An event is triggered each time an interaction occurs: a user loads a page, clicks a link, submits a form, or downloads a file.
• File Download: The number of times users clicked a link leading to a downloadable file.

A source indicates where the traffic originated, such as Google, a direct link, or another website.

• Device Brand: The brand name of the mobile device.
• Device Category: The type of device used by the user to view the website: mobile, desktop, tablet.

• Go to the Sessions Page.
• Adjust the time frame for the period you want to view. For time frames longer than one year, switch the time series view from Date to Year Month before selecting the date range to reduce load time.
• Choose “Contains” from the page URL drop-down.
• Enter the portion of the blog’s home page URL that follows extension.illinois.edu.
  • For example, to see the top blogs for The Garden Scoop blog, enter: /blogs/garden-scoop 

Marketing Tip: Edit Top Blogs

• Verify you have a “Main Article Image” sized 730x400.
• Check your hyperlinks and add links to related content.
• Check the “Parent Blog” status.
• Improve the formatting by adding “Image Text Rows,” “Image Rows,” or Image Galleries.

• Go to the Users Page.
• Adjust the time frame for the period you want to view. For time frames longer than one year, switch the time series view from Date to Year Month before selecting the date range to reduce load time.
• Choose “Contains” from the page URL drop-down.
• Enter the portion of the page URL that follows extension.illinois.edu.
  • For example, to see how many users accessed the methods page on the food preservation website, enter: /food-preservation/methods

Marketing Tip: Focus on These Metrics

• How much time did the average user stay on the page?
  • If it's shorter than expected, improve the page's content to keep the reader engaged.
• If the bounce rate is high, try adding links to related content to keep readers engaged on Extension websites.
• If the engagement rate is low, try adding downloads, links, or photo galleries.

• Go to the Source page.
• Adjust the time frame for the period you want to view
• Choose “Contains” from the page URL drop-down.
• Enter the portion of the page URL that follows extension.illinois.edu.
  • This could be a set of pages, such as: /blogs/good-growing
  • Or a specific page: /blogs/good-growing/2020-05-15-how-grow-sweet-corn

Marketing Tip

• Marrow the search date range to help determine if specific marketing efforts resulted in an increase of user traffic.
• “Read More” links in emails will appear as “Direct” sources and allow you to measure the success of your email marketing to some extent.

This data includes all pages of a specific unit's website — excluding blogs, events, and press releases.

• Go to the Unit Metrics Page
• Select your unit only from the Unit Field dropdown.
• Adjust the time frame for the period you want to view. For time frames longer than 1 year, switch the time series view from Date to Year Month before selecting the date range to reduce load time and ensure no dates are cut off.
• Sort specific pages of your site by views, sessions, or engaged sessions.
  • Views: Indicate the number of pages that were accessed on your site.
  • Sessions: Indicates the number of visits that began on your site. A session might include several page visits.
  • Engaged sessions: Indicates visits where the user did some type of action while on the page: download, click a link, visit another page.
  • Source: Shows you how users found any page on your unit website.
  • Session Start: Shows how many users started on a specific page when they accessed your site, compared to the total number of views for that page. This can help you determine if your page navigation makes sense or needs tweaks.
  • File Download: Shows the total number of clicks on a link leading to a downloadable file. There is no way to determine the number of downloads for a specific document when more than one document is on the page.

• Hyperlinks: On pages with higher views, add hyperlinks to related blog articles, topic pages, or videos to give visitors a path that leads deeper into the website.
• Media: Add an image gallery with captions or a remote video to the page to engage visitors.
• Keywords for SEO: Review pages to make sure keywords and keyword phrases are used throughout, and especially in the first few paragraphs. Use keywords that people use when searching for answers.
• Format: Google rewards pages that have well-organized content. Add headings, bullet points, and numbered lists where they make sense.

• Page Index Time: It can take days or weeks for Google to index a new webpage. Create website events as soon as possible to give Google time to index the event.
• Improve pages with short “time on page” results.
  • Add more robust, problem-solving content to those pages. Resist the urge to write everything you know on the topic. Instead, focus on One Problem | Our Solution. Be a helper, not an encyclopedia.
• Create content around topics that people are searching for.
  • Start a Google search on the topic and see what top auto-fill results come up.
  • Answer the Public has an easy tool that collects the questions people are asking on specific topics.
    • Choose United States (under the orange search bar near the bottom of the page).
    • Enter a topic (such as native plants) and the site returns dozens of popular search queries that people are making on that topic.
    • Pick one of the questions and answer it on a webpage, blog, or release.