ANALYTICS

 

We compiled weekly analytics reports for the Global Journalist editors. These reports looked at how users were finding, engaging with and sharing our content online. We analyzed the observations made and created takeaways and suggestions that the editors could use in content strategy, planning, creation and distribution.

 

Analytics reports consisted of five categories:

 

1. Search queries

 

Using data from Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools, we looked at what users searched to find our website, how many users saw our website by searching those terms and how many users then visited our website — and what page they first visited visited. We also looked at how long users stayed on our site and the average number of pages they visited.

 

2. Reader behavior flow

 

Using data from Google Analytics, we looked at how users were navigating our website. We looked at which pages they started on, which pages they progressed to and when they ended their session on the website. For stories with unusually high or low dropoff rates, we also considered the related stories featured for that article on the Global Journalist website.

 

3. Global traffic

 

Using data from Google Analytics, we looked at where our users are based and which stories people were looking at in those countries. Global usage is particularly important for our media outlet because we cover international journalism and cater to a worldwide audience. 

 

4. Social media referrals

 

We used multiple tools to determine where our content was being shared, who was sharing it, how much traffic it drove to the website and how much engagement our content had.

 

We used Google Analytics to determine how many visits were coming from each social platform and then, specifically, which articles were driving referrals from those platforms. We also compared the amount of traffic from social referrals to the total amount of traffic.

 

We used Facebook Insights to determine the reach of the content on our Facebook page, how people were engaging with it and how much traffic our posts sent to the website.

 

We used Twitter to see how people were engaging with the content posted by our Twitter account and to search how others were sharing and engaging with it.

 

We used LinkedIn Analytics to determine the reach of the content on our LinkedIn company page, how people were engaging with it and how much traffic our posts sent to the website.

 

We also used data from shortlink accounts, such as from bit.ly and buff.ly, to determine which registered users shared our content and how many referrals from each platform drove traffic to the website.

 

5. General referrals

 

Using Google Analytics data, we looked at what websites — besides search engines and social media platforms — were driving traffic to the Global Journalist website. We would visit the source of traffic and look at the context in which the referral was being used, as well as the type of site it was posted on.