LBC web metrics report – December 2016
Data from Google Tag Manager (configured by Periscopix) is used to report website statistics. Google Tag Manager (GTM) gives us more accurate and detailed data about users and their behaviour generally. So as well as providing evidence to enable service redesign it will help with other decisions about user experience, interface and content design.
GTM also incorporates user journeys across our whole web estate. For example, if a user visits the website and then goes onto the jobs portal or completes a form, this will no longer count as a ‘bounce’ as they are still within our web estate. This will enable us to allocate credit more fairly to the different sources used to access the various elements of our web estate, eg email campaigns and social media campaigns.
Click here to refer to the introduction, which explains the metrics tools used by the Web Services team and some of the calculations quoted in this report.
Intranet > Support services > Web services >
Statistics and reports
Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager
Analytics termsSessions: Total number of sessions within date range. A session is the period time a user is actively engaged with website and includes all usage data.
Pageviews: Total number of pages viewed. Repeated views of a single page are counted.
Unique pageviews: Number of visits during which the specified page was viewed at least once. A unique pageview is counted for each page URL + page title combination.
Avg session duration: Average amount of time users spent viewing a specified page(s) or screen(s).
Entrances: Entrances is the number of times users entered site through a specified page(s).
Bounce rate %: Percentage of single-page visits (ie where user left site from entrance page without further interaction).
Exit %: Indicates how often users exit from that page when they view the page.
About GTM
GTM is a tag management tool whereby a snippet of code unique to us is placed on each webpage to enable more in-depth tracking and collection of data.
The same code has been used in several components of the web estate, so where components such as AchieveForms and the jobs portal were previously tracked individually, we can now track visitors across the estate. This means we 'follow' a user if they go on to complete a form and then visit LutonDirectory or the jobs portal, for example. This helps us to understand the user journey more fully, rather than discontinuing the user journey once they leave the main website.
GTM also enables to us report on the website as a whole, where we reported desktop, mobile and estate individually in the past. There are plans to incorporate this tag into more of the estate over time to give us a more accurate picture of how people use Luton.gov.uk - GTM currently tracks the desktop and mobile sites, LutonDirectory, AchieveForms, jobs portal and Think Luton collectively. We are in the process of adding MyAccount and the planning portal to GTM.
Data from GTM
The figures below show results taken from data covering the last month (1 to 31 December) as collected by GTM.
(November figures are shown in red throughout this report for comparison.)
· Sessions
· 127,020 (156,598) total sessions were carried out by 77,667 (92,672) users – an average of 1.64 (1.69) sessions
per user.
· The average number of sessions per day was 4,097 (5,219).
· There were 512,944 (692,148) pageviews in December.
· Under half of these sessions, 57.24% (57.36%), were conducted by returning visitors.
· Users spent an average of 3 minutes 11 seconds (3m 26s) on the website, visiting an average of 4.04 (4.42) pages.
· 1,250 (1,430) sessions involved a transaction, ie submitting a form1.
December data from Google Tag Manager for Luton.gov.uk
As you can see from above, most statistics showed a drop of around 20%. This is a usual occurrence for the month of December and is due to the festive season. All schools and many businesses close for a number of days/weeks in December, and residents are more geared towards family and leisure rather than council-related tasks.
That said, it is a popular month for school admissions and free school meal applications. 6 out of the top 10 pageviews on the desktop site in December were education-related.
AchieveForm submissions
Forms receiving the most submissions in December were:
1. Apply for a tidy tip permit – 209 (214)
2. Make a complaints, compliment or comment – 139 (150)
3. Report an unlicensed vehicle – 112 (145)
4. Application for free school meals - 61 (107)
5. In-year application form - 61 (50)
It is worth noting that the ‘change of address or other circumstances’ form was consistently the most submitted form up to August. It was during August/September that a number of changes were made to the change of circumstances page on our website. Now directed to MyAccount, users are given a variety of options to report a change of address depending on personal circumstances. For example, people on benefits now have to complete a specific BECS form, and the MiMo form is now live, meaning the AchieveForm is now suitable for a very limited number of residents only.
323 submissions were received in August before any changes were made - we are now down to just 31 submissions in December.
The breakdown between GTM tracked components of the web estate in December is as follows:Component / Sessions / % of Dec traffic
Mobile / 57,025 / 40.58
Desktop / 49,343 / 35.11
Jobs portal / 24,516 / 17.45
AchieveForms / 4,972 / 3.54
LutonDirectory / 4,144 / 2.95
Think Luton / 1,519 / 1.08
TOTAL / 140,519* / 100
* The total sessions figure above shows 140,519, whereas the total by components shows 127,020. This is because TM counts sessions across the web estate, so if a user goes from the desktop website to AchieveForms in one session that is counted as one session in TM.
Under each component, however, this would be counted as one session in the desktop website view and one session in the AchieveForms view, thus totalling two sessions when we look at it that way. The total sessions figure reported above is more accurate as it shows the number of sessions carried out across the estate rather than a fractured view.
Pageviews for top ten requested pages in December
Jobs and careers / 6,752
School applications portal (SA) / 6,468
SA - Logon / 5,889
Bin collection days / 5,772
Education and learning / 5,448
Council tax / 4,226
SA - Make an application / 4,187
SA - School places / 2,816
Housing / 2,793
SA - Preferred schools / 2,289
Total / 46,640
/ Mobile
Bin collection days / 13,612
Bins and recycling / 6,488
Jobs and careers / 6,103
Council tax / 3,238
Tidy tips and recycling centres / 2,600
Housing benefit / 2,310
School admissions / 1,938
Bid for council homes / 1,831
Housing / 1,595
Paying your council tax / 1,558
Total / 41,273
/ Estate
Jobs portal / 63,949
Jobs - desktop / 60,702
Jobs portal - Job list / 39,949
Jobs - mobile / 26,697
Education / 9,806
Jobs - register / 9,332
Admissions - desktop / 9,325
Jobs - login to apply / 8,547
Admissions - mobile / 7,037
Parking permits / 6,390
Total / 241,734
Desktop and mobile combined
Page / Desktop / Mobile / Total / Page / Desktop / Mobile / Total
1 / School admissions (-) / 9,325 / 7,037 / 16,362 / 6 / Planning applications (8) / 3,903 / 1,930 / 5,833
2 / Education and learning (5) / 9,804 / 1,912 / 11,716 / 7 / Housing (4) / 3,535 / 2,168 / 5,703
3 / Jobs and careers (1) / 6,131 / 5,257 / 11,388 / 8 / Environment (7) / 4,096 / 1,360 / 5,456
4 / Council tax (2) / 5,325 / 3,776 / 9,101 / 9 / Bins and recycling (6) / 2,073 / 2,954 / 5,027
5 / Bin collection days (3) / 2,073 / 3,924 / 5,997 / 00 / Transfer to high school (-) / 2,824 / 1,543 / 4,367
As always, the top ten requested pages across desktop and mobile remained consistent. Eight of the pages shown in the combined table above also featured in the previous top ten (shown in red), just in a slightly different order. These top ten pages account for 84,047 or 53.99% of all pageviews in December.
There were two new additions to the top ten – school admissions and transferring to a high school in 2017. These are obviously seasonal additions as parents prepare for their children’s education in the coming year.
Bounce rates
A bounce is when a user arrives on a specific page of a website but doesn’t view any other pages – they leave the website from their entrance page.
Bounce rates usually reflect the purpose of the page/website itself. Where deeper interaction is required such as completing a form or applying for a job, you would expect the bounce rate to be low as users are extremely likely to visit other pages during their session. The entrance page is very rarely the end of the user journey.
For pages where the user comes to find the information on that page only, such as an entry on the consultation portal or LutonDirectory, you would expect to see a higher bounce rate as people would usually exit the site immediately, or bounce, having found what they we on the entrance page.
The following table shows bounce rates for all components of the web estate, from highest to lowest. The bounce rate across the entire web estate for December is just 37.24%*.
Component / Bounce rate % DecemberLutonDirectory / 63.43
Business funding / 50.00
Consultation portal / 49.61
Community funding / 44.59
LBC - mobile / 43.74
AchieveForms / 37.41
LBC - desktop / 33.59
MyAccount / 24.11
Jobs portal / 22.40
Housing rents / 21.48
Business rates / 19.32
Overall bounce rate / 37.24
Most of these bounce rates are as we would expect them to be. The components with the lowest bounce rates all require more in-depth interaction, such as making a payment or viewing/applying for a job.
LutonDirectory has the highest bounce rate and this is likely to be because people find 87.2% of users are taken to the directory via an organic search (eg Google) or a direct referral. This means they most likely arrive at the page they were specifically looking for and have no need to search further, thus exiting the website from their entrance page.
The 2011 Census estimated the number of households in Luton to be 74,293. This means that the number of web visits (desktop and mobile combined) per household in December was 1.63. That figure was 1.45 in December 2015. The number of visits per household in December when you incorporate the entire web estate is 2.74.------
*According to a study of bounce rates for UK council websites3, the expected overall rate would be between 40% and 51% because 50% of all local government sites are within that range. Our overall bounce rate for desktop and mobile of 37.24% sits just below that range, so we can assume the web estate is largely being used in the way it is intended.
Govmetric
Take-up
December take-up stats:
· number of visitors using website feedback option: between 4 and 23 (2 to 18) per day, or between 0.15% and 0.48% (0.10% to 0.52%)2
· average daily take-up rate: 13 or 0.30% (10 or 0.28%)
· total number of feedback responses: 390 (312)
The national average for take-up is between 0.75% and 1%, so our net take-up rate of 0.30% is low in relatively comparison to other local authorities. This is most likely explained by local demographics - more affluent areas of the country tend to report a higher use of the feedback service.
Satisfaction
December satisfaction stats:
· satisfaction levels: between -0.75 to 1 (-1 to 1) 2
· net satisfaction score: 0.03 (0.01)
Average net satisfaction across all councils for December was 0.02. Our score puts us in the medium-low quartile.
Drop-out
Users are able to skip some feedback screens as they are not all mandatory, so there is a high drop-out rate between some questions. Of 390 people that selected a feedback rating (smiley):
· 257 people told us what their feedback was about
· 181 went on to give a reason
· 55 left a comment
· 27 supplied their contact details
The following graph shows the number of people who completed each screen and where dropouts occurred:
Smiley ratings
390 selected a rating for the website in December – overall results are as follows:
Feedback about…
Options selected for feedback were as follows:
No / % / No / % / No / % / TOTAL / TOTAL %
1 (2) / Drop-out* / 69 / 51.88 / 26 / 19.54 / 38 / 28.57 / 133 / 34.10
2 (3) / Web page / 35 / 49.30 / 16 / 21.33 / 20 / 28.17 / 71 / 18.21
3 (5) / Website / 25 / 44.64 / 4 / 7.14 / 27 / 48.21 / 56 / 14.36
4 (1) / Information / 24 / 32.00 / 10 / 18.33 / 41 / 54.67 / 75 / 19.23
5 (4) / Council service / 8 / 14.55 / 13 / 23.64 / 34 / 61.82 / 55 / 14.10
TOTAL / 161 / 69 / 160 / 390 / 100.00
As can be seen from the table above, 14.10% of users left feedback in December rating a council service, policy or decision. Although not about the website itself, these ratings affect the overall GovMetric score for the website. However, it is inevitable that people will use the website channel to leave feedback for other reasons as it is convenient and can be anonymous. Including the option to leave these types of comments enables us to separate the data from genuine website feedback and to alert services of any potential issues where necessary.