Business Analytics Feature

The Business Analytics feature lets you track statistics about visits to your Web site. You can use it to determine the following kinds of information:

how often your content was viewed

how many site visitors viewed for first time, and how many returned

the most popular referral pages (that is, the Web page from which visitors clicked to arrive on your site)

Several options for selecting a date range let you compare activity across different weeks, months, and years.

This section also contains the following topics.

Enabling the Business Analytics Feature

Templates Tracked by Business Analytics

Tracking Templates vs. Individual Content Items

Specifying the Frequency of Writing to the Database

The Statistical Data

Tracking Site Visitors

Writing to the IIS Log

Business Analytics Reporting

Summary of Statistical Data Available

Site Statistics

Content

Business Analytics Feature

Referrers

Changing the Date Range of the Statistical Data

Analytics Tracker Server Control

The Most Popular Widget

The Trends Widget

Business Analytics API

Enabling the Business Analytics Feature

By default, the Business Analytics feature is disabled in the web.config file. To enable it, set the value of the ek_enableClassicAnalytics property to true.

If you set this property to true and later change it to false, statistical data remains within Ektron CMS400.NET, but no additional data is collected.

Templates Tracked by Business Analytics

Business Analytics data is tracked for every template that has an Analytics Tracker server control. For details about dropping this server control onto a template, see Analytics Tracker Server Control.

Best Practice

Drop the control onto an area that does not disrupt the template layout, such as the bottom.

Note: The Business Analytics feature can only track template views if the viewer’s browser cookies are enabled.

Tracking Templates vs. Individual Content Items

To track visitor activity to a template (for example, customerservice.aspx), drop the server control onto it. To track activity for a content items within that template, use control's properties designed for such tracking. See How the Analytics Server Control Tracks Content IDs.

Specifying the Frequency of Writing to the Database

Once you set up the Business Analytics feature, your database is subject to a continuous barrage of write activity, generated by visits to your site.

To mitigate the effect of this activity on your database’s performance, you can hold visit activity in application server memory until a predetermined amount of data is collected. When that amount is collected, it is moved in one packet to the database. So, the database is “hit” much less frequently.

You can specify the amount of data saved in memory prior to being written to the database using these web.config file elements.

recordsBeforeWrite - the number of unique template visits

timeBeforeWrite - the number of seconds since the last time a database write occurred

When either element reaches the value set in web.config, all records stored in application server memory are written to the database. That event also resets the value of both elements to zero (0).

The Statistical Data

For every template view, the following statistical information is captured.

url - the visited page

content_id - the ID of the visited content. Captured by the Analytics server control. See Also: How the Analytics Server Control Tracks Content IDs Tracking Templates vs. Individual Content Items

visitor_id - a unique GUID that identifies a visitor

hit_date - date and time when a page view occurred

referring_url - the URL a user was viewing before jumping to the visited page

visit_type - zero (0) indicates new visitor, 1 indicates returning visitor, 2 indicates all other views. See Also: Tracking Site Visitors

After a user logs on, the first page hit tracks the visit as zero (0) (if the user is new) or 1 (if the user previously visited the page). From then on, 2 is logged for that user.

Tracking Site Visitors

The Business Analytics feature provides information about visits made by new versus returning visitors. To capture this data, the feature asks this question whenever a page is visited: is the user logged in as either a membership or regular user?

If yes, capture the user ID with the statistical data

If no, place a cookie on the visitor’s computer

So, the first time a user visits a page, either user information is captured or a cookie is created.

The next time the user visits that page, the feature checks the visit history for the user ID, or for a cookie. If either is found, the visit is considered a return.

New Visitor Statistical Tracking

The same user visit may be considered new on one view but not on another. For example, someone visits on January 30 (Monday) then again February 2 (Thursday). On the monthly statistics, that visitor is new, but on the weekly statistics, the February 2 hit would be a return visit (his second this week).

Now consider a second visitor, who browses to your site on the first and 20th of the month. These visits would appear on weekly statistics as two new visits, but on the monthly statistics, only the first visit would show up on that month's tally of new visitors. The second visit would add to the return visitor statistics.

Writing to the IIS Log

In addition to writing Business Analytics data to the database, you can write it to the IIS log. To do this, enable the appendToIISLog element in the web.config file.

Note that if you set appendToIISLog to true, some Business Analytics data is only written to the IIS log and does not appear in the Workarea.

Business Analytics Reporting

The Business Analytics feature's reports let you drill down from the entire site to individual templates to individual content items.

Prerequisite: In your site's web.config file, the ek_enableClassicAnalytics setting must be set to true.

Note: The Most Popular and Trends Widgets also report on Business Analytics data. See The Most Popular Widget and The Trends Widget .

To access Business Analytics Reports, follow these steps.

Either

1. Browse to a content item for which Business Analytics data is being captured.

2. Right click the mouse.

3. Choose View Template Activity to see Business Analytics data for the current content item (to learn more about data captured for one content item, see Content).

4. ChooseView Site Analytics to view Business Analytics data for the entire site.

1. From the Ektron CMS400.NET Workarea,choose Reports > Business Analytics to view analytic data for the entire Web site.

Five levels of reporting are available.

Site Statistics

Content

Business Analytics Feature

Referrers

Summary of Statistical Data Available

The following table lists the kinds of analytic statistics that can be viewed at each level of the site.

Type of Statistical Information	Site-wide	Template- Level	Content- Level
Views of Any Template
Visitors: New and Return
Pie Chart of New vs. Return Visitor
Pie Chart of Views/Visitors Ratio
Bar Graph of Views/Visitors Ratio
Visited Pages
Visited Content Blocks
URLs from which Site Visitors Accessed Ektron CMS400.NET

Site Statistics

The Site Statistics screen offers an overview of all tracked activity within the selected date range. You see actual data for the

number of views

number of visitors

ratio of visitors per view

number of new and returning visitors

ratio of new to return visitors

Below this data are pie charts of the ratio of views to visitors and new vs. return visitors.

Note: To understand how new and returning visitors are tracked, see Tracking Site Visitors.

Content

The Content View shows the most frequently-accessed content items on your Web site.

You can click any content item to view

Content Statistics - statistics for that content item only (See Also: Site Statistics)

Content Activity - relative activity for that content item only (See Also: Content)

Audit Content - all users who viewed the selected content item; to the right of each user are the date and time when the content was viewed

Note: Only users who viewed the content after logging in appear on the list. Visitors to your site who do not log in affect statistics but are not tracked on this report.

Templates

The Templates View shows all viewed templates on your Web site, with the most frequently-accessed ones on top.

By default, the templates at the top have the highest number of unique visitors. You can change the sort by clicking on any column header. For example, to sort templates by the number of views, click Views.

Referrers

The Referrers View shows the domains from which your site was most frequently accessed.

Changing the Date Range of the Statistical Data

When you first view statistical data, the default date range is today (one day).

If you view statistics for different date ranges, when you return to the screen, the last selected date range is the default selection. You can change it if needed.

Using Quick View Options

Use Quick View options to view analytic statistics for any of the following time periods.

one day

one week

one month

one year

When you click Quick View [week], [month] or [year], the current end date is used as the last day of the range. Here are some examples.

Quick view time option	If end date is today, begin date is
Week	one week earlier than today
Month	one month earlier than today
Year	one year earlier than today

Using Jump To Options

Use Jump To options to view analytic statistics for a time period before and after the current date range. The time period is determined by the Quick View increment. For example, if the Quick View option is Day, you can jump to the previous day, the following day, or today.

Regardless of the Quick View increment, you can always view statistics for today.

Quick view option	If end date is today, begin date is
Day	previous day next day today
Week	previous week next week today
Month	previous month next month today
Year	previous year next year today