SharePoint News and Page Analytics

Several organizations use SharePoint for a wide range of applications ranging from using it as an intranet solution to a content repository or even building public-facing websites. The value of the solution is fully realized only when users leverage it in their everyday work. The challenge for most organizations is that they do not always know how their users are using SharePoint. While SharePoint provides sufficient information about usage at the site level, the same was not true at a more granular level. With the introduction of SharePoint news and page analytics, users can access detailed insights at the page-level.

What Were the Drawbacks in SharePoint Reporting Capabilities?

SharePoint provides built-in analytics capabilities at the site level for both online and on-premises versions. This means that organizations did not have sufficient information at the page level to make meaningful decisions. Here are some of the limitations the built-in SharePoint Analytics features had without page-level analytics.

• Users had to work with generalized summary analytics or as un-summarized information. For example, the Site Usage visuals show display summary charts without providing in-depth detail. There was no option for drilling down into the details.
• It was difficult to gauge how users interact with SharePoint content. With site-level analytics alone, it was challenging to assess user engagement, especially in scenarios in which SharePoint is used as a medium for corporate communications.
• Organizations had to rely on Power BI or external tools for granular data at the page level.

What Are the Features of SharePoint News And Page Analytics?

With the introduction of the page analytics feature, organizations can gather information about how users interact with their SharePoint pages and news posts. Analytics for the pages and news posts will be available under the Analytics at the top of the page. Here are some of the new features that have been introduced with analytics for SharePoint pages.

• Page viewers

  The Page viewers metric displays the total number of individual visitors to a page regardless of the frequency of their visits. The daily unique viewer trends can be viewed for the last 7 days, 30 days, or 90 days apart from the lifetime unique viewers, which is the total number of people who viewed content since February 2018 if the page was created before that.

• Page views

  This metric reflects the total number of page views for the last 7 days, 30 days, and 90 days. Repetitive, continual operations by the same user on the same item, such as when a user repeatedly refreshes the page, are filtered out.

• Average time spent per user

  The average time spent per user report shows the trend on the time spent on pages and news posts. The average count for 7 and 30 days is generated by considering the total time spent on a particular page and the number of unique visitors on that page in the specified timeframe.

• Page traffic

  Page traffic depicts the hourly trend of visits to a page over a 7-day, 30-day, or 90-day period. The darker the shades in a particular time slot on the chart, the more the views. This map can be used to determine the best time to post news and announcements.

Apps4Rent Can Help with SharePoint Implementation

While the introduction of the SharePoint news and page analytics feature improves the granularity of insights available to authorized users, there are other drawbacks to the built-in analytics feature that can be overcome using Powe BI and other Azure services.

As a Tier 1 Microsoft CSP and one of the first managed service providers for SharePoint hosting, Apps4Rent helps organizations to adopt and customize SharePoint based on their unique requirements. Contact our Microsoft-certified SharePoint Admins available 24/7 via phone, chat, and email for assistance.