Google Analytics Data January – June 2016

Whites Writing Whiteness Google Analytics Data Report: 1 January – 30 June 2016

This draft report contains provisional information about WWW website use for the particular time-period it covers. It has been compiled in a fairly undigested form from Google Analytics data, and will be subject to in-depth comparative analysis at culmination of the WWW project.

Changes from Last Report
In comparing user and traffic data from the Whites Writing Whiteness website with the previously reported period (1 July 2015 – 31 December 2015), several pleasing developments are apparent. Firstly, the number of visits to the website has risen 36.5% (from 1,687 to 2,303 respectively), with the new sessions also rising by 28.8%. Secondly, the number of visitors has increased by 28.4% (from 1,284 to 1,649 users) — with these users based in 85 countries and 638 cities around the world (versus 86 countries and 474 cities for the previous period). Thirdly, the number of pages viewed has also risen by 32.5%, with users collectively having viewed 6,496 pages (versus 4,901) during their visits to the website. The fact that website use continues to rise is very pleasing, and analysis of the details of usage indicates that this is a result of the regular posting of research-rich material  and of research tools on it.

The Six Month Report
The WWW website was visited by 1,649 unique users between 1 January 2016 and 30 June 2016. The site was accessed 2,303 times, from 85 countries, with the top ten countries in terms of number of users being the UK, USA, South Africa, the Netherlands, Germany, Canada Australia, Denmark, (not set), and Kenya respectively, and with visits from other countries including India, Finland, Italy, Sweden, New Zealand, Bulgaria, Tanzania, Zambia, Finland and Norway.

The site has users who repeatedly visit the site and many who spend much longer than average looking at its pages. Particularly prolific repeat users access the site from South Africa, the UK, US, and the Netherlands, including some habitual users from London, Glasgow, Cape Town, New York, Berlin, Sydney, Amsterdam and Hong Kong. For more detailed information, please see Table 6.

Users view many pages per visit, with an average of 3 (2.82) pages viewed each visit. Overall, there have been 6,496 page views in total. There have been 674 habitual users, spending detailed time on average 4 (4.22) pages per visit, while the 1,627 new users view an average of 2 (2.24) pages.

Regarding how frequently users return to the site, there have been 2 visits to the site by 153 users, between 25 and 50 visits to the site by 49 users, between 101 and 200 visits to the site by 114 users, and more than 201 visits to the site by 159 users. These data indicate a serious research use by some 200+ in-depth users, with the corresponding most-used pages presenting verbatim transcribed letters and documents, and containing detailed analytical discussion. It is very pleasing that users are responding so positively to the most research-rich aspects of the website pages.

Concerning length of users’ sessions, 161 users have spent between 3 and 10 minutes browsing the website, 122 users have spent between 10.1-30 minutes, and 56 users spent more than 31 minutes. The average number of users visiting the site per month is usually over 230 and sometimes over 300.

Breakdown of Site Usage by Month: 1 January 2016 – 30 June 2016

Users

Pageviews

Avg. visit duration (mins)

Freq. visitor
countries

January 252 847 2.19 40
February 272 1,032 2.51 41
March 308 1,765 4.00 46
April 343 1,151 2.38 50
May 294 1,047 2.44 51
June 231 654 1.50 40

The most accessed page after the homepage is the project ‘Blog’, with the ‘Reading Lists’, ‘How to…’ (focused on the detailed practicalities of how to carry out archival research) and the ‘Traces’ (discussing in detail specific research documents) areas also being highly popular. The project blog contains largely theoretical discussions in addition to project updates, and users continue to follow these discussions.

There are a number of facilities which we at WWW have designed to support research use, and it is very pleasing that these are as effective as they are. The Traces area of the website, introduced in the previous report (Jul-Dec 2015: 2), continues to be widely read and used by readers. In addition, launched in March, ‘How to…’ is an increasingly popular area of the WWW website. Devoted to ‘how’ topics of doing high quality archival research, ‘How to…’ was introduced as an innovation aiming to support the research use of the material on the WWW pages and also to encourage secondary analysis, and is one which seems to have proved useful to WWW readers. The range of ‘How to…’ topics is expanding, and at present there are ten detailed posts on matters including methods of mapping collections, document interpretation, and beginning and finishing an archival research project.

In addition to tracking use of the WWW pages via Google Analytics, email contacts and traffic arising from more one-off enquiries are also logged. In this current period, over 20 such enquiries have been fielded. Four have been particularly notable. The archivist of a well-known US college contacted us to say how useful for the ‘How to…’ pages had been in her own research on college papers as well as by students. Information has been requested by a Swaziland coffee-growing consortium concerning farming techniques used by the Forbes Family, whose archival papers have figured significantly in a number of project publications as well as on the WWW website. Advice was sought by a private collector concerning the provenance of letters being sold by a South African auction house. And a member of the Schreiner family contacted the project to offer access to a new and previous unknown – and large – set of Olive Schreiner letters

User Traffic
The majority of users (56.5%) find the website through organic searches via Google and other search engines. Many users also visit the website by direct link (17.2%) or via referrals from the Edinburgh University’s website (26.1%).

Where users access the site from, and how often:
Tables 1 through 5 below present geographical images show the frequency of website usage for this reported period. These indicate number of visits to the website by saturation of blue ranging from light blue (fewer sessions) to dark blue (the most sessions), and the range in the bottom left corner indicates the lower and upper bound of sessions for this period according to continent (Table 1), sub-continent (Table 2), and sub-regions (Tables 3-5).

Table 1. Number of Visits by Continent
screen-shot-2016-09-24-at-17-51-28Above, the range spans from 35 sessions ((not set)***) to 1,288 sessions (Europe), and indicates via darkening shades of blue that the most users accessed the website from Europe for this reported period.

***(not set) indicates that location data could not be determined for the associated users. This could mean, for example, that IP addresses were masked or were not made available for data collection because of some other reason.

screen-shot-2016-09-24-at-18-15-41

The data above demonstrate that the majority of Whites Writing Whiteness website users access the website from Europe (55.9%), the Americas (22.5%), and Africa (10.7%), and that users from Europe and the Americas tend to spend the most time on the website. 

Table 2. Number of Visits by Sub-Continent Region
screen-shot-2016-09-24-at-17-59-25

Above, the range spans from 2 session (Central Asia) to 974 sessions (Northern Europe), and indicates via darkening shades of blue that the most users accessed the website from Northern Europe for this reported period.

screen-shot-2016-09-24-at-18-01-15

The data above demonstrate that the majority of Whites Writing Whiteness website users access the website from Northern Europe (42.3%), Northern America (21.3%), Western Europe (9%), and Southern Africa (6.6%), and that users from Eastern Europe and Northern America tend to spend the most time on the website.

Table 3. Number of Users by Sub-Region – South Africa
screen-shot-2016-09-24-at-18-02-36

Above, the range spans from 1 session (the Northern Cape) to 43 sessions (KwaZulu-Natal), and indicates via darkening shades of blue that the most users accessed the website from Gauteng for this reported period.

screen-shot-2016-09-24-at-18-04-32

The data above demonstrate that the majority of Whites Writing Whiteness website users access the website from KwaZulu-Natal (29.3%), Gauteng (27.9%), and Western Cape (27.9%) regions, and that users from the Free State and Eastern Cape regions tend to spend the most time on the website.

Table 4. Number of Users by Sub-Region – United States
screen-shot-2016-09-24-at-18-05-48

Above, the range spans from 1 session (Tennessee) to 128 sessions (Connecticut), and indicates via darkening shades of blue that the most users accessed the website from Connecticut for this reported period.

screen-shot-2016-09-24-at-18-06-52The data above demonstrate that the majority of Whites Writing Whiteness website users access the website from the states of Connecticut (29.9%), New York (10.3%), and California (9.1%), and users from Connecticut and Virginia tend to spend the most time on the website. 

Table 5. Number of Views by Sub-Region – UK
screen-shot-2016-09-24-at-18-07-48

Above, the range spans from 11 session (Wales) to 590 sessions (England), and indicates via darkening shades of blue that the most users accessed the website from England for this reported period.

screen-shot-2016-09-24-at-18-08-39

The data above demonstrate that the majority of Whites Writing Whiteness website users access the website from England (69%), Northern Ireland (12.1%), and Scotland (11.24%), and that users from Northern Ireland and Scotland also tend to spend the most time on the website.

Table 6: Cities, Number of Visits and Pages Accessed
The data below show, by city, the number of visits, number of pages accessed on average and the average duration spent on the site, respectively. N.B. asterisks denote particularly intense site usage and/or high numbers of visits.
Country City Visits Pages accessed Avg. visit duration  (mins)
UK

(10 of 103)

(not set) 150* 5.43* 06:27*
London 126* 1.99 02:33
Liverpool 63* 4.16* 02:32
Edinburgh 50* 2.66 02:39*
Southport 49* 5.49* 04:57*
Glasgow 32* 4.16* 03:33
Bolton 32* 4.42* 04:27
Blackburn 29* 3.72 05:26*
Cambridge 22 2.27 00:34
Manchester 21 2.57 02:00
USA

(10 of 185)

Trumbull 68* 15.59* 18:30*
Monroe 46* 10.61* 19:15*
New York 31* 1.16 00:05
Los Angeles 12 1.08 01:27
Philadelphia 7 1.14 01:18
Sweet Briar 7 2.71 10:19*
Seattle 6 1.00 00:00
(not set) 5 1.60 00:14
Chicago 5 1.00 00:00
Boston 5 1.20 03:13*
Australia

(10 of 15)

Sydney 17* 1.18 00:48
Adelaide 11* 1.82 01:00
Melbourne 8 1.00 00:00
Brisbane 6 1.17 01:12
Canberra 3 1.00 00:00
Hobart 2 1.00 00:00
Ballarat 2 1.50 00:26
Gold Coast 2 8.00* 08:23*
Wollongong 1 1.00 00:00
Alice Springs 1 1.00 00:00
South Africa

(10 of 28)

Cape Town 39* 2.23* 01:26
Berea 25* 1.00 00:00
Durban 14* 1.21 02:07*
Sandton 11* 4.09* 07:24*
Johannesburg 9 2.00 00:34
Bloemfontein 7 2.71* 03:17*
(not set) 6 1.00 00:00
Durban 3 1.33 00:19
Grahamstown 3 1.00 00:00
Germiston 3 1.00 00:00

 

Last updated: 24 September 2016


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