Web analytics

Web statistics provide a look at how often your site is visited, and what people are doing while at the site. You can use these statistics to make decisions about your site and pages - rearranging, reworking, deleting content and links to better serve your visitors.

How to use Google Analytics

Login to Google Analytics

If you don't have the Google Analytics username and password, email WebHelp.

1. Go to http://www.google.com/analytics/
2. Select the Sign In link and login

Once you login, the next screen you see is our analytics home page.

Choose external or internal site

You can choose between our external and internal sites or select a specific report. Select the link to expand the selection for the appropriate site listed under www.wsdot.wa.gov

• UA-970887-21 www.wsdot.wa.gov: WSDOT Production (external)
• UA-970887-22 wwwi.wsdot.wa.gov: WSDOT Intranet Production (internal)

How to find your page or website

On the left navigation bar, click Behavior then Site Content, then Content Drilldown. This uses the channel folder structure to “drill down” to the specific page you want. For example, you want to find pageviews for:

http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Publications/HighwayMap/view.htm

On the grey navigation bar in the middle of the page, locate the search box and enter publications. Click the magnifying glass icon.

The next page will have /publications/ among the selections. Click on /publications/ to drill down to /highwaymap/.

Click on /highwaymap/ to drill down to /view.htm. Statistics for the page are displayed in the columns to the right of /view.htm.

By default these pages show 10 rows of results. Click on the Show Rows drop-down at the bottom of the page to show more rows.

You can define a specific time period by selecting the drop-down arrow next to the date displayed at the upper right of the page.

Other stats you will see

Pageviews: A pageview is defined as a view of a page on your site that is being tracked by the Analytics tracking code. If a visitor hits reload after reaching the page, this will be counted as an additional pageview. If a user navigates to a different page and then returns to the original page, a second pageview will be recorded as well.

Unique Pageviews: A unique pageview aggregates pageviews that are generated by the same user during the same session. A unique pageview represents the number of sessions during which that page was viewed one or more times.

Bounce Rate: Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality - a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren't relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site.

% Exit: The percentage of site exits that occurred from this set of pages or page.

Analytics Training

Select Help from the toolbar at the top right. Find answers to questions, articles on understanding key reports and learn how to navigate around the interface.