Web Activities Dashboard Overview
The Web Activities dashboard provides valuable insights into how visitors interact with your website content. By tracking visitor behavior, acquisition sources, and demographic information, you can gain a better understanding of your audience and make data-driven decisions to improve your website.
Using the Dashboard
Use this dashboard to understand how visitors use your website, and how they "convert", or take a desired action. The dashboard can also be used to understand how users find your website, and how effect your campaigns to drive visitors to your website have been.
Accessing the Dashboard
The Web Activities dashboard can be found via the Insights sub-menu. The Insights module can be accessed from the Data + Automations dropdown in the top navigation.
Dashboard Features
The Web Activities dashboard features sections addressing your web visitor's behavior, how they were acquired and who they are. It also covers the performance of each of your pages.
Web Activities are filter to a specific time range by default. Controls also allow you to select the conversion type you would like to measure, and whether to include anonymous sessions in your default.
Tabs
The Web Activities dashboard is organized into two tabs. The Web Activity tab visualizes user behavior on your website. The Form Submissions tab visualizes and logs Forms Submitted.
Web Activity
The Web Activity tab visualizes how user's interact with your website. Modeled as Sessions (groups of activities within a certain period) and Pageviews, data shows what uses did on your website and whether they accomplished key tasks, like submitting a Form or registering for an Event.
Global Controls
Global Start Date: The start date of the time filter. Set to the start of the previous quarter by default.
Global End Date: The end date of the time filter. Set to "today" by default.
Active Conversion: Select the conversion you would like to measure. Available options are "Form Submission", "Event Registration" and "Started Application".
Identified: Filter the dashboard by "Identified" visitors, "Anonymous" visitors or both. Both by default.
IP Address: Filter the dashboard by a specific IP Address. Helpful for excluding your campus or office building.
Behavior
Features:
Big blue numbers indicate the sum or average of key metrics.
Metrics are time-filtered by the global controls.
The Sessions card indicates the total number of visitor sessions during the time period
Average cards show the session duration in minutes, sessions per user, time to conversion and time on site after conversion.
Sessions Over Time
Features:
A line chart shows how Sessions compare to a previous period.
Unique Controls:
Comparison Period: Select the comparison period. Options are Previous Year, Previous Quarter and Previous Month.
Time Aggregation: Options are Day, Month, Quarter and Year.
Sessions Over Time Date Range: A unique date range control for only this visualization. Defaults to the same time period as the global controls.
Page Performance
Features:
Big blue numbers indicate the sum or average of key metrics.
The Total Pageviews card displays the number of pageviews your site has received.
Average cards show the time on page in minutes, link clicks per page, time to last link click and pages per session.
A log shows all pages by a variety of metrics.
Unique Controls:
Page Search: Filter the section by searching for a page.
Page Metadata View: View the Full Url, Full Url + UTMs, Page Path, Hostname or Page Title.
Acquisition
Features:
Insights showing the top 3 Referrer Segments and top three entrance URLs
Pivot Table showing Session Referrers and their Conversion Location, grouped by Referrer Segment.
Audience
Features:
Pie chart shows the distribution of identified vs anonymous visitors.
Map shows the location of visitors by their zip code.
Insights show the top 3 browser and operating systems for your visitors.
Bar chart shows demographic information about identified visitors.
Form Submissions
The Form Submissions tab visualizes trends in Form Submissions
Global Controls
Global Start Date: The start date of the time filter. Set to the start of the previous quarter by default.
Global End Date: The end date of the time filter. Set to "today" by default.
Form Name: Select the Forms you want to analyze and compare.
Form Type: Filter the Form Submissions tab by forms that were either the main form or follow up form.
Form URL: Select the URLs at which Forms were submitted, and filter the dashboard.
Form Submission Occurrence: Students submit multiple Forms. Filter the dashboard by a specific submission occurrence.
Features
A line chart shows how Form Submissions compare to a previous period.
Big blue numbers indicate the sum of Form Submissions for the period, and the Average Form Submissions per Contact.
Top 3 Insights for Form names, Form Submission URLs, UTM Sources and Device Types.
A heat map to visualize when forms are most frequently submitted.
A comprehensive log of each Form Submission.
Dashboard Data
Web Activities data is derived from the Activity Feed associated with each student record. Read more about the Activity Feed. The dashboard considers pageviews, link clicks, form submissions, event registrations, and application starts.
The dashboard then groups these activities into "sessions". A session begins when a user views a page and ends after the user has not viewed any more pages for over 30 minutes. If form submission, event registration or application start occurs within that duration, it is considered a "conversion" of that session.
Note: The Web Activities dashboard does not necessarily count all form submissions, event registrations and applications starts. Only the ones that can be attributed to a session.
Data Capture
Element451 natively captures activity data on Element451 Pages, Event Sites and Application Sites. Use the Element451 Tracking Pixel to capture activities on your other websites. Read more about tracking and using the Tracking Pixel.
Identity Resolution
While form submissions, event registrations and application starts can easily be linked to a student record, page views and link clicks can be anonymous. Element451 runs several processes to associate these activities with student records.
Anonymous page views and link clicks are retained and available in the dashboard. However, some visualizations that require identity will not populate data if identified visitors are filtered with the global controls.
Referrers and Referrer Segments
A "referring" URL is the website the visitor was previously on before starting their session on your website. Referrer data is visualized in the Acquisition section. Referrer Segments are groupings of these referrer URLs, based on attributes of the URL.
"Direct" traffic has no referrer. The user manually typed the URL into their browser or clicked through a bookmark.
The list of referrer segments is far from comprehensive. Please notify customer support if you would like a segment to be added.
Dimension Definitions
A list of the Dimensions unique to the Web Activities dashboard.
Dimension | Definition |
Browser | The web browser used by the person to browse your website. Common examples include "chrome", "safari", "firefox". |
Device Type | The type of device the person used to access your website (ie. "iPhone", "Mac", etc.) |
Entrance URL | The URL of the web page the Session began on. |
Full URL + UTM | The URL of a web page, with any query parameters appended to the end. Query parameters are data items appended to the end of a URL with the "?". UTMs are common query parameters. |
Full URL | The URL of a web page. |
Hostname | The hostname of a web page. The hostname is the domain, top level domain and subdomain at which the web page is located. |
Identified | This is a feature flag column, indicating if the website user can be identified to a person record. |
Operating System | The operating system of the device the person used to browse your website. |
Page Path | The folder directory and page file "path" that the web page is found at. |
Page Title | The metadata title of the web page. |
Referrer Segment | Groupings that label frequent referrers. Learn more. |
Referrer | The full URL of the website that the user visited prior to visiting your website. |
Metric Definitions
A list of the metrics present in the report and how they are calculated.
Metric | Definition |
Anonymous Session | A Session completed by a user that was not linked to an Element451 student record. See "Session" |
Link Clicks Per Page | The number of clicks on a page per pageview. |
Pages per Session | The number of pages viewed during one session. |
Pageview | Counted when a user loads a website page. |
Session | A collection of activities that occur within 30 minutes of each other. The session expires after 30 minutes of inactivity. |
Session Duration | The time between the start of the session and the end of the session in minutes. |
Session Duration After Conversion | The time between the conversion and the end of the session in minutes. |
Sessions per User | The number of sessions a user has logged during the period. |
Time to Conversion | The time between the start of the session and the conversion in minutes. |
Time to Last Link Click | The time between the pageview and the last link click on the page in minutes. |
Time on Page | The time between the pageview and the next pageview, capped at 30 minutes. |
Troubleshooting & FAQ
FAQs
Why is there no data?
There are a variety of reasons why Insights visualizations might be blank. Try the following quick fixes:
Reset the report. Visualizations or controls may be filtering the report.
Check the date controls. If the date is too far in the past, it may pre-date your activity in Element451. If the date is in the future, no activity has happened.
My conversion counts don't match other data.
Form submissions, event registrations, application starts, appointment schedules and conversation opens are only counted in the Web Activities dashboard if they are attributable to a session. They are not necessarily a total count of all conversion activities.
Why can't I see all Form Submissions in the Web Activities tab?
The Web Activities tab shows Form Submissions in the context of Sessions. If a Session converted with a Form Submission, that will be shown in the Acquisition section. This is not a comprehensive list of submissions. Form Submissions can be logged when Sessions aren't. In this example, a Form exists on a website page that is not being tracked by the Element451 tracking pixel.
Ensure all pageviews and link clicks are being tracked on your institutions website by deploying the Element451 tracking pixel. Read more.
For a comprehensive log of all Form Submissions, see the Form Submissions tab.
Why can't I see all Event Registrations or Application Starts in the Web Activities tab?
Similar to Form Submissions, all other conversions (Event Registrations, Application Starts, Appointment Schedules and Conversation Opens) are only shown on the Web Activities tab as a conversion of a Session. This is not a comprehensive list. See the prior FAQ for more information.
For a comprehensive report of Event Registrations, see the Events dashboard.
For a Application Starts, see the Funnel dashboard.
For Appointments, see the Appointments dashboard.
For Conversations, see the Conversations dashboard.