Build it and they will come! But it is very important that you know who are the visitors to the SharePoint site and where do they spend most time. To make this task easier many known software companies have come up with web analytics tools to help users find which content is popular and which is not. Likewise, SharePoint 2010 too has integrated a Web Analytics feature, which helps you collect, report, and analyze the usage and effectiveness of your SharePoint 2010 deployment. To put it in simple words, Web Analytics reveals which content is most popular and which is not.
Take advantage of SharePoint Web Analytics tool and other useful features of SharePoint 2010 hosting, SharePoint Foundation hosting or SharePoint Server 2010 – with shared or dedicated hosting by a SharePoint 2010 hosting provider.
Web Analytics Reports
In SharePoint 2010, the Web Analytics reports that are available out-of-the-box provide insights into the behavior of users of your SharePoint sites. There are three categories of reports that are produced which are as follows:
* Inventory Web Analytics reports: Inventory Web analytics reports provide key metrics of the inventory of your sites:
1. What is the total disk drive space user (Storage Usage);
2. How many sites exist (Number of Sites);
3. Top Site Product Versions, Top Site Languages, etc;
* Traffic Web Analytics reports: Traffic Web Analytics reports provide metrics such as:
1. How much traffic your site gets (Number of Page Views);
2. Who visits your sites (Top Visitors);
3. How visitors arrive at your site (Top Referrers);
4. Daily Unique Visitors, Top Destinations, Top Browsers, etc;
* Search Web Analytics reports: Search Web Analytics reports give you insight into what users are searching for. For instance:
1. How many times users searched (Number of Queries);
2. What were the most used search terms (Top Queries);
3. What queries have high failure rates (Failed Queries);
4. Best Bet Usage, Search keywords, etc;
Custom Web Analytics Reports
It is possible to create your own custom web analytics reports by using the Customize Report button under the Analyze tab in the Ribbon. Clicking this button will export the data contained in this report to Excel. Excel is a power analytics tools and makes it easy for non technical users to add your own charts, set specific filters, and combine data from multiple reports. In addition, the data within Excel is refreshable, which means that, once you customize the report, it will always be up-to-date with the latest data.
Features of Web Analytics Tool
Best Bets Suggestions: Best Bets allow search administrators to determine what the most relevant search result is for a given keyword. Now administrators can simply look through each of the Best Bet suggestions and easily accept or reject them. To access the Best Bet Suggestions, go to Site Actions, click on Site Collection Web Analytics Reports, and the click on Best Bets Suggestions on the left navigation.
Web Analytics Web Part: The Web Analytics Web Part is mainly created for Site Managers. This new Web Analytics Web Part is an end-user facing Web Part that can be easily inserted into any page on your site. It can be configured to display the ‘most viewed content’ or the ‘most frequent search queries’ in the site. The data in the Web Part is continuously refreshed as new content or new search queries become more popular.
All in all, Web Analytics in SharePoint 2010 will help you better understand what users want from your site, what are the popular content on your site, etc. Web analytics tool will help you customize your SharePoint farm to best meet their needs.
