Google Analytics - Data on the User Experience

by Addie Van Salisbury on Feb 28, 2020

Have you ever wondered how many people access your OPAC in a day? Or how many in an hour? I wonder what the busiest time of day for your OPAC is? Or how long patrons spend on your site?

If you have ever been interested in these questions or questions like these, I would recommend checking out Google Analytics!

https://analytics.google.com/

Google Analytics is a free software that provides digital analytics on the activity of visitors to your site. If you are interested in or need to have statistics on the usage of your OPAC, whether it is searching or placing holds, Google Analytics can provide you with that data.

Google Analytics currently has the following modules:

• Realtime' - this will show you data on a second by second basis. This shows how many users are on your site and what pages they are on currently
• 'Audience' - shows data on the users. For example, the location of the user or the type of device they used to access your site (laptop, smartphone, etc.)
• 'Behavior' - shows data on the types of searches user used to get to your site, or where they are going within the site itself once they get there
• 'Conversions' - this module most likely would not be too beneficial for many of our partners, as this shows us data on marketing campaigns, if you utilize Google for your marketing

If you get lost in any of the modules, there are a lot of great tutorials for beginners to Google Analytics!!

The data you can gain from Google Analytics may help you to understand your patron and their experience searching your catalog and the actions they most likely take once on your site. Hopefully, it can give you information to guide future decisions to improve the patron experience.