Visits and user behavior on research project pages are tracked in the analytics tool Google Analytics 4 (GA4).
By monitoring statistics, you can, among other things, see where your visitors come from (both in terms of channels and geographics), what content they are most interested in and whether they take action in terms of contacting you, clicking on publication links, following the project in social media, etc.
Detailed web statistics also provide a solid foundation for reporting on the effect of project pages to funding sources and other stakeholders.
How to get web statistics for your project page
Selected key figures, such as the total number of views and number of user sessions that include a visit to your page, are available under the "About" tab in Vortex. The numbers are accessible to anyone with editing rights to the pages in question.
If you'd like more comprehensive statistics, get in touch your local web editor. To have easy access to updated stats, it's advisable to have data presented in the data visualization tool Looker Studio. The web editor at the faculty/museum can order a customised Looker Studio report from the Department of Communications and External Relations.
What's useful to measure
Properties of traffic
The web statistics show where the traffic to the project page comes from, both geographically (country/region) and digitally (whether users clicked through from an email, Teams, another part on the website or the QR code on a scientific poster). It is also possible to see which Google searches have led traffic to the page.
This provides a certain understanding of who your audience are and which measures work best to get them to your page.
Actions on the page
While the number of page views can give us a general idea of traffic volume, it is useful to use more detailed indicators to measure the success of communication on the page. Below, we have gathered some examples of measurable actions that are relevant for many project pages.
Some formats, like news articles and videos, aim to engage and interest users in the project. The following indicators can then be used for evaluation:
- number of views and scroll percentage on news articles/other content pages
- number of video starts and percentage of video played
Getting users to contact you, familiarize themselves with the project's results, and choose to follow the projec on social media or via newsletters are also appropriate goals for project pages. The following GA4 events can be used to measure these actions:
- clicks on contact persons: contact_click
- clicks on project participants: participant_click
- clicks on publication links: publication_click
- clicks on social media icons: social_icon_click
- document downloads: file_download
- clicks on buttons (e.g. newsletter, event registration): normal_button_click
Please note that these events, with the exception of normal_button_click and file_download, were activated on 24 May 2024. They are only valid for project pages that are created using the most recent project page template (launched in March 2024).