Understanding your audience and how they are interacting with your content is one of the keys to creating truly useful and high-performing content. Qualitative, deep user research is the best way to get a real understanding, but quantitative metrics can also give you useful insights you can act on.
Mobile v desktop
Google Analytics can tell you quite a lot about your users and how they access your pages. One of the most useful is the percentage of people using a mobile v desktop device.
When you’re working on your pages in the office with a nice big screen, it’s easy to forget that a little over half (54%) of the visitors to nsw.gov.au are actually using a mobile phone.
Some audiences are more likely to be using mobiles, such as younger people, or people from lower socio-economic backgrounds who may not have access to a computer. If your content is aimed at these groups, you may find that the device split skews more towards mobile.
Although nsw.gov.au is designed to be responsive to different screen sizes, your content structure has an impact on how readable the page is on mobile. For example, cards that display in columns across the page on a big screen stack vertically on a small screen, potentially pushing important information a long way down the page.
Questions to answer
- Does my page traffic skew significantly towards mobile or desktop, compared to the site average of just over half on mobile?
- If my pages have higher than average mobile traffic, are the pages structured appropriately?
- Have I prioritised any call to actions for mobile?
Use Google Analytics to report on mobile audience
In Google Analytics, go to Reports > Audience > Technology and devices > Device – Category.
Filter the report – you can filter to a specific page:
- Click the Add filter button just under the report title
- A dialogue will popout on the right-hand side of the screen. In the Dimension box, start typing Page path and screen class and select it
- Select Match Type contains
- In the Value box, paste in your page path – without the nsw.gov.au at the beginning
- Click Apply bottom right.
How to read the report
Once you have applied your page filter, the GA reports breaks down users (active users) and total visits (sessions) to your content by device category (desktop / mobile / tablet / smart tv).
The most useful metric is probably Active Users which indicates how many of each device-type visited your page. Percentages are also provided in brackets (%). Sessions will often be higher since a user may conduct more than one visit.
What you can do about it
If the report shows your content skews more mobile, consider the structure of your page:
- Is the most important content towards the top?
- Is your key call to action towards the top and prominent?
Languages used
You can use Google Analytics to get a feel for the different languages your audience may prefer. There are two reports that will give you this information:
- Browser language – where a user has set their browser preference to a particular language
- Google Translate events – where a user chooses to use the Google Translate widget at the top of every page to translate content
You should consider these reports together to get an indication of your audience's language preferences.
Questions to answer
- Are there any languages more commonly used than others?
- Is this content targeted at particular CALD groups?
- Has the content been written with CALD audiences in mind?
What you can do about it
Language data is mostly useful for helping you build a picture of your users. It can also help you target the right languages if you are intending to invest in professional translation of your critical content.
It can also help you build a case for rewriting content with CALD audiences in mind, in cases where you need to get stakeholder or management buy-in for a rewrite project.
More information
Browser language
Google Analytics captures when a user has their browser set to a specific language. This does not mean your content is translated from English however it can indicate the user’s preferred language.
How to find this report
In Google Analytics go to Reports > Audience > Technology and devices > Browser – language.
Filter the report – you can filter to a specific page:
- Click the Add filter button just under the report title
- A dialogue will popout on the right-hand side of the screen. In the Dimension box, start typing Page path and screen class and select it
- Select Match Type contains
- In the Value box, paste in your page path – without the nsw.gov.au at the beginning
- Click Apply bottom right.
How to read the report
The table will show you the most common browser language settings. The most useful metric is Active users, which gives you language stats for engaged users.
Google Translate
See how many people use the Google Translate feature (header of every page) to translate specific content.
How to find this report
In Google Analytics, go to Reports > Events and interactions > Events – Page tools: Google Translate.
Filter to a specific page by pasting the page path (without the nsw.gov.au in front) into the Search box at the top of table and hitting Enter.
Other demographic information in Google Analytics
Google Analytics does provide a number of demographic reports, including geographical information (country, region/state, city), age and gender.
Age and gender are reliant on browser privacy settings and users being logged in to a Google Account when browsing. While this may represent a small subset of users the data might be of some interest where you have content targeting particular age groups or genders. Use as a guide only as data will not be accurate.
Geographic data may also be of some interest, especially if your content is targeted at rural or remote audiences for example. Again, be aware that these reports should be used as a guide only. Under privacy terms, both Google Analytics and internet service providers will limit availability and accuracy of data.
Need any more help?
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