Website usage data
Case reference FOI2019/00058
Published 7 June 2019
Request
Dear Sir or Madam, Please could you provide the following information about the usage of your www.guildford.gov.uk website and any relevant sub-domains: Please note: If your organisation uses Google Analytics to manage its website data please consider using our custom report (see end of this request) which will automatically collate the information below. Please provide the below figures for the 12 months ending 31 July 2018 unless only a shorter time frame is possible.
1. The total number of sessions (also known as visits) made to your website(s).
2. The total number of sessions broken down by day of the week (e.g. Monday, Tuesday etc..)
3. The overall "bounce rate" that is the proportion of sessions which involved only 1 pageview.
4. The proportion of sessions on your website made on desktop devices, mobile devices and tablet devices respectively.
5. The total number of sessions for each channel group (what Google Analytics calls 'Default Channel Grouping') (e.g. Direct, Organic search, Referral, Social, Other etc..).
6. The total number of conversions (what Google Analytics calls 'Goals') in the past 12 months. Note: If you have not configured your system to collect conversions please state that.
7. The total number of sessions per advertising campaign. Note: If you have not configured your system to collect advertising campaign data please state that.
8. Please confirm what system you use to measure site usage (such as Google Analytics). If you filter some sessions from your website (such as visits from IP addresses used by your employees), please provide the figures for both the filtered and unfiltered data (what Google Analytics calls "views"). If you have multiple websites please provide these figures for each site. Please ensure that the data is provided under a licence that facilitates re-use (the Open Government Licence would be ideal). Please note: If you use Google Analytics Google Analytics includes a feature called 'Custom Report Template Sharing' which will automatically compile specific data stored in Google Analytics without the need to manually drill down into the data. We recognise Freedom of Information requests of this nature can be time consuming so to reduce the workload we have setup a custom report template which, if you permit, will automatically compile the data we are requesting into one report. This data can then be exported into an Excel document like other typical FOI responses. • Here is a step-by-step walkthrough on how to use the custom report template here - https://medium.com/@luke_7237/a-step-by-step-walk-through-for-using-a-google-analytics-custom-report-template-8f29deffaac0 • Here is the URL for the Custom Report Template - https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/template?uid=CHXifLonTGGFTBiM5PgaLA Overall the data we are requesting from you will be used to update a report we published in 2015. You can find out more here https://bit.ly/2x2YhQW Many thanks, Luke Piper Sent via Mail Merge
Response
We have considered your request for information. We do use Google Analytics to some extent although we find it somewhat limiting with the changes to the way that people are using the internet. On a daily basis, we use Siteimprove as this provides good analytics coupled with usability and accessibility information that allows us to optimise our sites continuously. That said, we have used your customer reports to draw together the information you have asked for. One caveat to using this data is that Google Analytics dropped out for the period 24 March to 1 May 2018, which means you do not have the whole picture in the attached reports. To illustrate this, here is our estimate for the difference in page views:
Page views for www.guildford.gov.uk for 31 July 2017 to 31 July 2018 = 3,054,352
Page views from 24 March 2018 to 1 May 2018 = 92,967
If you take this period's figures away from total, it gives = 2,961,385
A substitute period of 39 days from 6 May to 13 June = 370,614
Add the substitute figure to year total, which equals = 3,331,999
You could use this information to extrapolate the other data, so that you had a more accurate figure. On the other hand, you may choose not to use the data, depending on the data quality that you are looking for. I hope that this helps you to make a decision.
Documents
- Analytics guildford.gov.uk Internal Traffic South West England LA GA Data V.1.0 20170731-20180731 - campaigns.csv (218 B)
- Analytics guildford.gov.uk Internal Traffic South West England LA GA Data V.1.0 20170731-20180731 - channel grouping.csv (327 B)
- Analytics guildford.gov.uk Internal Traffic South West England LA GA Data V.1.0 20170731-20180731 days of week.csv (437 B)
- Analytics guildford.gov.uk Internal Traffic South West England LA GA Data V.1.0 20170731-20180731 device category.csv (250 B)
- Analytics guildford.gov.uk South West England LA GA Data V.1.0 20170731-20180731 - campaigns.csv (516 B)
- Analytics guildford.gov.uk South West England LA GA Data V.1.0 20170731-20180731 - channel grouping.csv (349 B)
- Analytics guildford.gov.uk South West England LA GA Data V.1.0 20170731-20180731 - days of week.csv (520 B)
- Analytics guildford.gov.uk South West England LA GA Data V.1.0 20170731-20180731 - device.csv (241 B)
- Analytics Your Guildford South West England LA GA Data V.1.0 20170731-20180731 - channel.csv (297 B)
- Analytics Your Guildford South West England LA GA Data V.1.0 20170731-20180731 - days of week.csv (416 B)
- Analytics Your Guildford South West England LA GA Data V.1.0 20170731-20180731 - device.csv (233 B)
- Analytics Your Guildford South West England LA GA Data V.1.0 20170731-20180731 campaigns.csv (199 B)
This is Guildford Council's response to a freedom of information (FOI) or environmental information regulations (EIR) request.
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