1. From Black Hole to Goldmine Putting Analytics in the Portal
Martin Morrey, University of Edinburgh

2. Our Trajectory In a Perfect Universe Inside The Black Hole
To The Event Horizon
GOLD!
Lets Go Mining
What Next
Summary

3. In a perfect universe…
From Black Hole to Gold Mine
June 4, 2013

4. Your university has a portal

5. WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT YOUR PORTAL?
Please write a user story
In your groups
On a card
Online participants
By tweeting with #edu13 #bh

6. Story should contain…
WHO
WHAT
WHY

7. Card Example
WHO
As a student communications officer, I want to know which announcements are the most popular with students each month, so I can improve the quality and uptake of our communications with students
WHAT
WHY

8. What have we got? Have you completed your card? Have you Tweeted?
Tweets for #edu13 #bh

9. Prioritise Put sticky dots on stories you think are: Most useful
Most important

10. Inside the black hole

11. The Black Hole of User Tracking
Portal
User activity
Illustration: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

12. What we had… Server-side logging We could find out:
How many users logged-in
Some idea of roles (student, staff…)
What customisations are made
BUT that was about it!

13. “Black Holes Ain’t So Black”
Go client side:
It’s where the users are!
Google Analytics:
Quick
Familiar
Free!

14. Escaping the Page Singularity
The default unit of tracking in Google Analytics is…?
…the page
BUT Page Views are little use:
In our portal, pages ≡ tabs
We are most interested in channels
A tab contains multiple channels

15. The event horizon

16. Client1: Google Analytics Events
Code attached to a user interaction
Link click
Button click…
Use to record interactions with our channels, BUT:
~200 channels
Using a range of technologies
All to be coded separately

17. Client2: Apply the events in client
Use jQuery to:
Add click event to every link and button displayed
After page has rendered
Covers everything user sees:
Portal interface
Portlets
Proxied content…

18. Page Rendered

19. Events Added, +0.1s

20. GOLD!

21. Seeking Nuggets… WHAT is used? WHO is using it? MORE
Name of channel + links, buttons, controls clicked
Navigation
WHO is using it?
Applicants, staff, students…
Organisational unit, Degree Programme
MORE
Errors, performance, geographic…

22. What GOLD

23. GA Events (WHAT) Google Analytics Events have 3 key properties:
Category
"Navigation", "Channel-Use", "Error",…
Action
Name of the tab, channel…
Label
Text / URL of link

24. Results: Top Categories

25. Channel-Use Actions

26. Announcements Labels

27. Who GOLD
From Black Hole to Gold Mine
June 4, 2013

28. GA Custom Variables (WHO)
Attach persistent attributes to user
Key-Value pair, recorded with event
Maximum of 5
Used to segment our results
From Black Hole to Gold Mine
June 4, 2013

29. Custom Variable 1:MyEdRole
June 4, 2013
From Black Hole to Gold Mi

30. "Event Booking" Segmented

31. more GOLD (optional)

32. Visits by Distance Learners

33. Visits by Applicants

34. Visits by Alumni

35. Announcements Error Events

37. Lets go mining

38. Lets Build a report Taking our favourite story/stories Lets choose a:
metric
dimension
way to segment users

39. Way forward (optional)

40. What We're Doing With It Now Potential for:
Input into a portal restructuring exercise
Priorities for mobile
Reports to channel owners, projects
GA “Intelligence” for early warnings
Potential for:
Dashboards for channel/tab owners
Library, Careers, Alumni services

41. More Analytics Solutions
Pwik
Open source
Access to raw data ->deeper analysis
Better real-time reporting
Google "Universal Analytics"
Custom dimensions and metrics (20!)
Tracking configured from web console

42. summary
From Black Hole to Gold Mine
June 4, 2013

43. Escape Complete Using a client application of Google Analytics we can:
Track any link or button displayed to the user
Build meaningful reports on portal usage
Segment by up to 5 attributes of user/context
Portal analytics provides useful info for:
Service management and improvement
Owners of individual portal channels

44. Gold miners required! Martin.Morrey@ed.ac.uk @martinmorrey
Web Integration Manager
Applications Division, Information Services, University of Edinburgh