What the terms mean:

• Information about your users
  • 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 how long an average user is staying 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 reflects the percentage of users who came to a specific page and left your site without visiting another page or staying on your page longer 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.
     
• Information about sessions
  • 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 during one session. 
  • Session: A session includes all the pages a user visits in one setting 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, downloads a file.
  • File Download: The number of times users clicked a link leading to a downloadable file.

• Information about sources
  A source indicates where the traffic originated, such as Google, a direct link, or other 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.

How to find the information you need:

What are my all-time top blogs?

• Go to the Sessions Page.
• Adjust the time frame for the period you want to view. For time frames longer than one year, switch time series view from Date to Year Month before selecting date range (to cut down on 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 your top 20 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.

How many users accessed a webpage/blog/event page?

• Go to the Users Page.
• Adjust the time frame for the period you want to view. For time frames longer than one year, switch time series view from Date to Year Month before selecting date range (to cut down on 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 selling food page on the food website, enter /food/selling-food

MARKETING TIP: Focus on these stats:

• How much time did the average user stay on the page? Was that your expectation in creating the page? If it's shorter than expected, can you improve the content of the page to keep the reader on the page?
• If your bounce rate is high, try adding links to related content that keep the reader engaged with Extension websites. 
• If your engagement rate is low, try adding downloads, links, or photo galleries.

How are people finding my page?

• 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:

• By narrowing the date in your search, you can determine if specific marketing efforts resulted in an increase of user traffic. 
• “Read More” links in emails will show up as “Direct” source and allow you to measure the success of your email marketing to some extent.

What data is available specifically about my unit website?

This data includes all the pages of your 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 one year, switch time series view from Date to Year Month before selecting date range (this reduces on load time and ensures that no dates are cut off).
• Sort specific pages of your site in order of 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 all the views that page had. 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 downloads for a specific document if there are more than one documents on the page.

What can you do today to expand your reach?

• Since much of our traffic is dependent on Google finding us, you can also review Liz Smith's recent training video on creating keyword-rich content.
• Create website events as early as possible to allow Google time to find the page.
• Find the high-performing pages on your site.
  • Be intentional about adding links to other relevant content (blogs, videos, tip sheets) on these super pages that drive users deeper into other Extension webpages.
• Find 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.
  • Include keywords that people use when searching for answers.
• Make your webpage more scannable. See how we converted this legacy blog by adding links to additional blogs, embedding a short video, and improving the page layout with headlines, bolds, and bullets.
• Create content around topics that people are searching for.
  • Answer the Public has an easy tool that collects the questions people are asking on specific topics.
  • Be sure to 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.