Web Analytics

Introduction

This document describes what we currently track with Matomo which is an open source web analytics platform hosted by our IT-Support.

If you are interested in analyzing user behavior in the MDM, you will need to request access to https://webstat-admin.dzhw.eu/piwik from Ruth Cordes. That web interface can only be accessed from within the DZHW-network (e.g. via VPN).

Since the MDM is a Single Page Application we use Matomos JavaScript Tracking Client to track the following pieces of information:

• Visitors
• Pages
• Search
• Downloads
• Events and Goals

Visitors

Matomo tries to unduplicate visitors by setting a cookie with a generated visitor ID in the browser (see here for details). A visitor can make multiple visits per day (see here for details). For each visitor the following pieces of information are tracked:

• IP (without last two segments (e.g. 10.0.x.x))
• device
• operating system
• browser
• screen resolution
• referrer (from which site does the visitor come from (e.g. Google))

Therefore it is possible to answer the following questions:

• Which browsers are mostly used for the MDM?
• Where do most visitors come from?

Pages

We track each page change in the MDM and we track how long a visitor stays on a page. Therefore it is possible to answer questions like the following:

• How often is a data package details page visited?
• Do the visitors find the shopping cart details page?
• On which page do the visitors leave the MDM?

Search

We track the following pieces of information when a visitor uses the search in the MDM:

• Type of domain object searched for (e.g. data package, survey, variable,...)
• The string the visitor typed into the search input
• Number of search results

Therefore it is possible to answer the following questions:

• Which search strings are used most frequently?
• Which search strings entered by the visitor lead to no results?

Since we currently do not track the search filter which the visitor used, we cannot evaluate if a search returned no results because of the search string or because of the combination of filter and search string.

Downloads

We track when a visitor clicks a download link in the MDM. Therefore it is possible to generate reports about the download frequency of MDM attachments. However those numbers do not include direct downloads, e.g. when a user receives a download link via email.

Events and Goals

Matomo allows to track arbitrary events (e.g. visitor clicks a specific button) in order to be able to understand what a visitor does in the application. Those events have to be defined in the MDM client code. Currently we track the following events:

• "report-publications": tracked when a visitor clicks one of the buttons which can be used to report related publications.
• "download-method-report": tracked when a visitor clicks a download link of a method report.
• "add-to-shopping-cart": tracked when a visitor clicks the button "Add to shopping cart".
• "checkout-shopping-cart": tracked when a visitor clicks the button "Order free of charge"

Among others, events can be used to track conversion goals. The following conversion goals are currently defined:

• "Warenkorb an DLP gesendet": reached when event "checkout-shopping-cart" is tracked
• "Benutzer*in möchte Publikationen melden": reached when event "report-publications" is tracked
• "Daten- und Methodenbericht heruntergeladen": reachend when event "download-method-report" is tracked