Every Igloo includes the opportunity to use Google Analytics to get a look at how your community is being used, tracking traffic and hotspots. It can give you real time information on what's happening, how actively consulted your knowledge base is, which files are accessed most frequently, and whether your blog posts are driving people deeper into your community. With that kind of information, you're well-equipped to learn what people in your community want, and how best to give it to them, to get your community running as smoothly as possible. 

Setup

You can learn how to set up a free Google Analytics account and manage properties there by clicking here. It's a three step process, and will generate a code that starts with UA-. This is your tracking number. Copy that, navigate to the Google Analytics panel in your Igloo community, paste it in the text field, and you're done. The Igloo platform will immediately implement the tracking script in every area of your community, and your analytics will start collecting data. 

So what can you do with it? 

Vision in real-time

At any time of the day, you can check Google Analytics and see the current activity in your community in real-time. The Real-Time Overview includes how many active users there are, what areas are the most active in the community, and where those users are located. This will count all of the users actively navigating the community, and can be a great way to get snapshots of your community's day to day use, or keep an easy eye on the effects of a big announcement. 

Navigation Summary

In the Behaviour Overview panel, you can find more traditional analytics, historic information on your community's traffic going back to when the tracking code was put in place. The overview includes hot locations, the number of page views, and the ability to view traffic over time. Selecting a page from the list will give you a view into its specific details, including the Navigation Summary tab. 

The Navigation Summary is a view that shows where people were coming from when they visited that page, and where they went when they left. Are they reading meeting agendas by following the related links in your calendar events? Going to the videos announced in your latest blog post? Using breadcrumbs to navigate back through wikis, or finding their team spaces from the front page of your community? The Navigation Summary can tell you all that and more. 

Finding what they're looking for

The Behaviour menu also has a view for traffic on all of the pages in the community, under the Site Content dropdown. The search box lets you search for any url in your community to view the traffic on it. And in your Igloo community, searches have unique urls. 

Every set of search results in Igloo includes /?search=. That's followed by the search terms, and then by any applied filters, like filters by label, space, or content type. Putting /?search= into the search box in the site content menu can give you with analytics on every search made in your community. Seeing what people are searching for can be an invaluable tool for informing your community's architecture. Seeing a lot of searches for a similar policy? Link it in your community bookmarks. Searches for something that isn't in the community? You'll know what to add. You can access the Navigation Summary on these searches to see how long they spent on the search page, and where they went to. Did they find what they were looking for? Did they move to your Q&A forum? With this view, you'll know for sure. 

We all have a vision of what the community will look like when we build it, but it will always change to meet the needs of the people who use it. The insight you can gain from Google Analytics can keep you ahead of that curve, and make sure people are engaged, that they're finding what they're looking for, that that you intranet is delivering what they need every day. 

For more information about using Google Analytics in Igloo ask a question in the Community area, or ask Igloo staff directly in the weekly webinar.