Analytics: Google Analytics and Simpplr

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Simpplr allows your org to integrate with Google Analytics. Google Analytics offers many of the same insights Simpplr's native analytics does, but it also allows you to drill down into specific content and view bounce rates, average time spent on a page, number of users per segment that view content, and much more. You can also create custom reports and dashboards to share. 

The first step is to create a Google Analytics account, set up your Property (your Simpplr intranet), and get your Google Tag ID. To create your account, follow the steps in this Google Help Center article. Best practice is to use your organization's Google admin (if applicable) create the account, but you can use any Google account to create the Analytics account.

Note: As of July 1, 2023, Google Analytics no longer supports Universal Google Analytics, and has moved to GA4. The steps in this article will reflect setting up a GA4 account.

Connect Google Analytics to Simpplr

1. From your Google Analytics home page, go to Admin. From the Property column, select Data Streams. Select the Property you created when setting up your GA account. 
2. Scroll down to Google tag and choose Configure tag settings. Select your property again in the tag settings to retrieve your Google tag. It will start with "G-". Copy this code.
   
3. Head to Simpplr as the App manager and navigate to your user profile image. click Manage > Application > Integrations. Find the Analytics tab, then paste the Google tag you just copied after checking the box next to Google Analytics 4.
   

Once your tag ID is saved into the Manage > Application > Integrations menu, Google Analytics will automatically start tracking all intranet activity. Note that Google cannot track historical data from before the integration.

Key metrics to track

Audience

• Geographic location
• Number of active users over a given time
• Number of New and Returning users (This is determined by the user's IP address)
• Average engagement time (how much time users spend on the intranet)
• Type of device used to access the intranet (desktop, tablet, mobile)

Acquisition - How the user got to the intranet. In other words, were they sent from a 3rd party link, email, or was their entrance organic? This helps users discover the best avenues for advertising their intranets to users. 

Engagement - What activity did your users perform on the intranet?

• Overview - Average engagement time and number of views
• Events - Actions taken on the website; i.e., number of clicks, form submissions, searches, etc.
• Conversions - Not applicable to your intranet. This section gathers sale data
• Pages and screens - Page paths and user journeys throughout the intranet
• Landing pages - The first page on the intranet a user saw

Retention - The number of new users vs. returning users over time

Of course, in addition to all of these, there are many more metrics you can track using Google Analytics. You can customize any reports based on parameters that you set. For example, you can view data from custom date ranges, user types, acquisition types, etc. Google allows you to create custom reports and export them to Google Sheets, PDF, Excel, or CSV. 

Best Practices

While every organization is different, a lot of our customers use analytics to measure the same data points. Some common data points among everyone are:

• Total unique page views
• Time spent on content
• Number of full time users vs contract users

How many users are on the intranet?

Use the metric Users to view how many unduplicated users come to the intranet over a given time period. In addition to Simpplr's native analytics that show you this metric, you can monitor trends of visitors over time. In Google, the Users metric counts each session as one session even if the customer views multiple pages.

How engaged with the intranet are my users?

To measure this in Google Analytics, use the metric Avg. Session Duration. You can find this metric in any avenue of reporting while using Google. Avg. Session Duration is the average duration of a session in the intranet. It measures how much time on average a user spends on a page, site, or the intranet altogether during one session.

The metric helps you figure out how engaged users are. For example, if you're monitoring views on a piece of content that has an average session duration of 30 seconds, you may realize that users aren't staying on the page as long as you'd like them to, and therefore not receiving all the information they need. You can tailor your content to fit the 30-second window your users spend on the page.

How interested in content are my users?

Similar to Avg. Session Duration, Bounce Rate helps you effectively measure whether or not your users are reading or viewing content within the intranet. A bounce rate is determined by the number of single-page sessions on your website in which the user did not have any interaction before leaving. For example, if you have an average bounce rate of 20%, that means 20% of your users are not interacting with the intranet after coming to whatever landing page brought them there. 

To help lower bounce rate, consider your most common landing page that brings users to the intranet, and try to make that page more engaging for users. Include links or references to important sites, add feed post ability, polls, etc. All items that can lead to further engagement with your users. 

How are my users getting around on the intranet?

Google Analytics offers user journey mapping. This means you can follow the routes they take once on the intranet, starting from the landing page, all the way to the exit page. You can break down by number of page views or percentages where users started, and how often they took the same paths or different paths to get to content. 

This helps you create a better user experience going forward. For example, if you find users take more than 3 interactions to reach their final point on the intranet, you can edit or maneuver your content over time to decrease the amount of clicks users take to find what they're looking for.