Having used the Google Analytics (GA) application in conjunction with Talis Prism 3 (and Engage) for some time, we asked two of our customers what they thought of the application and what information from GA was being collected and used on a regular basis.

The dashboard view is certainly something that featured highly in the feedback – particularly its ability to show trends across a variety of options, allowing easier monitoring of developments such as increased usage of ipod/iphone.   As Christine Smith, Collection Development Manager, University of Bolton said “The general dashboard information is used quite a bit to show trends – and always impresses senior managers.”

Other information regularly collected includes:

• Daily/hourly totals usage graphs
• Usage by browser/operating system, enabling better system support
• Top keyword searches which give detail on what people are looking for
• Monitoring the hits on “promoted” items

Below are three screenshots showing the different pieces of information that are readily accessible using Google Analytics.  Clicking on any of the screenshots will open up a larger image which will enable you to see the details of the report more easily.

This first screenshot shows a typical dashboard view, based on our demonstration tenancy, Broadminster,  giving a high level overview of items such as the number of  visits to the tenancy, the sources of the traffic and a map showing where the visitors are from.

This second screenshot delves deeper into the visitor data and shows the number of people visiting the site over the given time period, how many pages were viewed, and the average amount of time spent on the site.  This report also shows which browsers people have used to access the site and a list of the various connection speeds.

The third screenshot looks specifically at search terms and details information about the most popular search terms.

However, the reports are not limited to just these factors.  If the information is recorded, then it can be reported on.

In summary, using the feedback from Mary King, Applications Manager (Library Systems), Southwark Council  “To be honest if you have the time you can pull all sorts of really interesting, useful and quirky info from analytics, we love it here.  We have much better access to a much wider range of stats, presented in a range of user friendly formats.  If we had time and resources (I) am sure there is lots more we could be doing but for the moment it makes it much easier to track usage and identify trends.”

Talis Training is also currently working on a training session looking at using Google Analytics to monitor the usage of your Talis Prism 3 tenancy.  Further information about this will follow.

In the meantime, if you would like any further information or to discuss the implementation of Google Analytics within your tenancy, please contact your Account Manager or email training@talis.com