Tracking access to your site
Third party analytics tools allow you to track access to a website — for example how many people have looked at a page and how they arrived at the page. The most well-known of these tools is Google Analytics.
Embedding a Google tracking code in your website means adding a non-essential cookie to your site. For European customers, the latest guidance from the ICO guidance requires that site visitors are given the option to explicitly indicate their consent or opt out of non-essential cookies being applied.
The reason for this is that Google's use of cookies gives it the ability to associate a user with other online activity, and with various bits of data, which all go into creating a profile of that person's internet activity. For many people this won't really be a concern, as the data is all relatively abstract — but if users are entering what is potentially sensitive and personally identifiable information on your site, you give someone who has access to both a) response data and b) web analytics the opportunity to breach a respondent's anonymity. This risk is quite remote, as there is no one who is likely to both have that information and the desire to do that, but it is worth consideration in terms of your ethical stance on privacy and your data protection concerns.
To be compliant with the ICO guidance, therefore, we recommend that you do not add an analytics tool to your site. If you are adamant that you need to collect analytics data, the other option is to add a third party cookie consent tool to your site.
If you are determined to go ahead with using Google Analytics, please be aware:
1. Google Analytics is different from Google Tag Manager, which we do not permit customers to add to their site. You can find our guidance in our article on adding third party tools.
2. It can be quite a complex tool to use, although you may not find it too difficult if you're only interested in looking at some basic data. If you want to go further, this will require a reasonably detailed understanding of web analysis. There is some useful material online to help you learn, mostly provided by Google (you can see this at the bottom of the article), but you should be aware it will require some time and effort!
Google has its own set of articles on how to use the application. They are laid out in easy to understand format in the help pages - we would suggest you read through these to get a detailed understanding of how GA works and what you can get out of it. However, we give you an introduction below on how to use it with Delib products.
Setting up Google Analytics on your Delib site
1. This Google article explains the basics of setting up an account. You will need a Google account (you can do this without a gmail address, find out how). You will need to create a name for your GA account and enter the URL of the main site you want to track.
2. Once your account has been created, you'll be taken to your home screen, with your tracking code shown below, for example:
If you need to find your tracking code again, you can get to it by going to the 'Admin' tab at the top of the page when you sign into Analytics, then go to 'Tracking info'
3. Provide us with the tracking code (ie. the wedge of Javascript code in the box starting with <script> and ending with </script>, rather than the tracking ID)
4. We'll add this code to your Citizen Space/Dialogue /Simulator website.
5. If you do decide to go down this route then your Cookie policy e.g: https://demo.citizenspace.com/cookie_policy will need to be updated in the 'non-essential cookies' part, to say you are collecting this kind of information on your visitors. We've added an example of this additional information you will need to provide.
Further notes on using Google Analytics
There are different levels of permission users can have within one GA account — this Google support article explains more. Essentially you can track multiple sites using one account, and give multiple viewers permission to view the analytic data. You can track up to 50 sites (or 'properties', in Google parlance) from one account. This may be useful if you are running multiple activities and want to track them all.
It's also important to note that when you set up an analytics account, it will not capture historic data — so if users have already been accessing your site before you implemented analytics, they won't show up in the data.
Also note that Citizen Space only inserts GA on public facing pages. This means that analytics regarding the admin side of the system are not collected.
What can you do with Google Analytics?
The key functionality of Google Analytics is to provide data about the people who are viewing your site. The data that will be most interesting to you are probably:
- How many people have viewed the site
- How long each of them spent on the site once they were there (called a 'session')
- Where the site has been viewed from (this will be particularly important if you are running a local activity — you will want to be sure that most of those who are viewing and responding to your activity are in the area concerned!)
- The 'bounce rate' — when a user accesses the site, but then leaves immediately without actually clicking on anything. A high bounce rate might mean you need to work on your homepage to make it more accessible or appealing (there is another phrase, '% exit', that you will also come across in analytics - it has a very similar meaning)
These are the basic data — you may not want to view anything more than this. You will get all of this data when you login, go to the 'Reporting' tab at the top of the page, and then select 'My dashboard', under 'Dashboards' on the left-hand column. You'll see an image like this:
By clicking on 'add widget' at the top-left hand corner, you can add another infographic of your choice to the dashboard, if there are metrics you are particularly interested in.
Note: Checking the 'hits' for a particular activity
This information should be contained with the 'behaviour' tab on the Google Analytics sidebar. If you scroll down on the sidebar, and open up Behaviour > Site Content > All Pages, you will see a list of all the pages on your site that have been viewed by their url. There is a search bar above the list, so you can type in some of the url you are concerned with. You will then see a list of figures relating to that url — 'Unique Pageviews' is the one that roughly translates to the number of hits.
There are also various options to do slightly more sophisticated analysis. These can all be accessed on the toolbar along the left hand side of the screen:
- 'Intelligence events' — this is basically a functionality that sends you alerts when there are spikes in activity around your site. You can set custom alerts for when particular events happen.
- 'Acquisitions' — this is about showing you where people are coming to your site from - so, are they coming to it via searching for 'X council budget online', or are they coming to it through a link on the council website?
- 'Audience' — this tells you information about the specific users looking at your site. There are two sub-categories of audience data, demographics and interests, which require a bit of a tweak of your Google analytics - turning on 'Advertising Features'. You will need to edit one line of your tracking code, and will need to edit your privacy policy accordingly.
- 'Real Time' — quite self-explanatory: this will let you look at activity on your site in real time.
- 'Behaviour' — this lets you look at how users are 'behaving' on your site such as how long they are spending on each page
Learning more about Google Analytics
There are plenty of useful resources provided by Google itself if you want to get the most out of using its product. Their help pages are very useful if you want to learn more. You can also have a look at Analytics Academy — this is a set of more in-depth, free online 'courses' from Google that teach your more about using GA, and about digital analytics in general.
Here is an example of the kind of additional information you need to supply in your Cookie Policy
Google Analytics
This website also uses Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. ('Google'). Google Analytics uses 'cookies', which are text files placed on your computer, to help the website analyse how users use the site. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity for website operators and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage. Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on Google's behalf. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google.
By using this website, you consent to the processing of data about you by Google in the manner and for the purposes set out above.
You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser, however please note that if you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality of this website. We are committed to following the ICO privacy and electronic communication regulations.
Google Analytics sets cookies to help us accurately estimate the number of visitors to the website and volumes of usage. This is to ensure that the service is available when you want it and fast.
| Cookie name | Typical content | Duration |
|---|---|---|
| _utma | Randomly generated number | 2 years |
| _utmb | Randomly generated number | 30 minutes |
| _utmc | Randomly generated number | Until end of the session |
| _utmz | Randomly generated number + info on how the site was reached (e.g. directly or via a link, organic search or paid search) | 6 months |
| _ga | Randomly generated number | 24 months |
For further details on the cookies set by Google Analytics, please refer to the Google Code website.