Managing and analysing our websites

The Student Education Service (SES) website, and For Students website are managed by the Student Communications team. Find out about web analytics and management of both sites.

Analytics

We use Google Analytics to track and report on web traffic to both websites. This data is anonymous, and used to identify trends, seasonal behaviour and the impact of campaigns and other work. Additionally we can see the in-site searches that our users make within the websites. (Google Analytics is covered within the Privacy and Cookies notice on both websites, which aligns to the General Data Protection Regulation.)

To view the reports, you don't need access to Google Analytics, however if you'd like to explore this in more detail, or create your own report, then the information is on the Comms website. 

+ View website analytics 

For Students website analytics

SES website analytics

We can also analyse specific sections of our websites. This gives us the opportunity to look closer at user behaviour within different sections. The report includes: 

  • page views
  • time spent on each page
  • where our users come to the website from
  • how long an average user spends on a page 

How to view the report

  • Click on the above link. This will take you to Google Data Studio
  • Click bottom left to change the date range
  • Use the top left navigation to move through the report
  • You can click on individual column headings to change what is displayed 

Note: You can download or export your report by using the icons on the top right of each page that displays data.

+ What to do with this information 

Analytics tell the story of what your users do when they're on your web pages. It's important to consider how we can use them to improve their experience. The following questions are worth considering when you look at the report:

  • How long are users spending on specific pages? Is it long enough, or do you think it's too long? This is a good indication of whether the information on the page is useful.
  • Compared with last year, how is the section performing? More or less views? Is the content up to date? Does it need delivering in a different way - is the website the correct place for this content? 
  • If you've been working with Student Communications to plan a social media campaign, can you see the impact of this? What happens when a social media post is made?
  • Are there any surprises? A lot of traffic could suggest something we're not aware of. Are users having difficulty finding information?
Please contact studentcommunications@leeds.ac.uk for support, questions and guidance.

+ Glossary

Page views

To total number of times a page has been viewed by all users.

Users

Number of users who have had at least one unique session in the specified date range.

Sessions

A session is the period of time a user has actively engaged with your website. For example, when a user goes to a website, reads information, downloads a form then leaves, that would be determined as one session. If they were to come back to the website another time, this would be counted as a different session.

Entrances

Volume or percentage of the number of times users entered the website through a specific page or group of pages. For example, if a page had 2,000 page views and 500 entrances, this would mean 500 people arrived on the website at that page, and 1,500 viewed one or more other pages on the website before viewing that page.

Bounce Rate

The percentage of sessions which only include one page and registered no interaction with the content.

Exit %

This indicates what percentage of users left the website after viewing this page.

Default Channel Grouping

A group of sources with the same medium. Example: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are all social media so in channels they will be group together under ‘Social’, much like how Google, Bing and all other search engines are grouped together as ‘Organic Search’.

Channel: ‘Referral’

Indicates when users clicked a link from another site, excluding major search engines. This could include some University of Leeds website which are not using the central Google Analytics tracking code.

Traffic Source

Every visit to a website has an origin point, known as a ‘source’. This might be in the form of a search engine or a referral from another website. The ‘Traffic Source’ report tells us the specific URL’s which are directing traffic to our website.

Source: ‘Direct’

Direct traffic is usually a result of when a user enters the URL into their browser, or arrives via a previously saved bookmark. 

Updating pages 

We have a governance structure which means that every page on both the SES and For Students website has a named owner. Owners are responsible for making sure that content on their pages is up to date and accurate.

The owner may not always make changes to the information on the website. There are a number of authors who can create and amend content but it always has to be approved by someone else before it goes live on the website. This makes it easier to check that new content is written in the same style as the rest of the site and that it has been put in the best place(s) on the site.

Please contact studentcommunications@leeds.ac.uk if you'd like more information.