COVID-19 Updates landing page dashboard documentation

Overview

This document outlines the metrics found in the COVID-19 Updates and Info dashboard, the context for each metric, and why these metrics matter to the intended audience consuming the dashboard. This document serves as a history of the changes made, and describes the "trail map" of future enhancements and fixes.

The dashboard is primarily concerned with data around the Mass.gov page:

• /info-details/covid-19-updates-and-information

Dashboard audience

The main audience is a team of content strategists whose role is to advise other Executive Branch agencies on how to write informative, helpful, and search engine friendly content for Mass.gov. They also try to help other agency content owners adopt best practices and processes to help them achieve this.

They are responsible for collaborating with the Department of Public Health and the Governor's Office on updating and maintaining a COVID-19 updates & information page, whose purpose is to funnel users to coronavirus resources across the site. This dashboard helps them decide how to improve and maintain this page.

Metrics

Traffic Volume and Sources (page 1)

All metrics are shown for the current month to date and compared to the previous period (except the Sessions by Hour and Sources pie charts).

Sessions over Time Line Charts

The line chart on the left shows the number of sessions that include the COVID-19 Updates landing page for the current month to date. The line chart on the right shows all pageviews for Mass.gov in general, but has a filter control in the upper right hand corner that allows for the selection of one or multiple pages to compare to the COVID-19 Updates landing page.

Sessions by Hour of the Day Line Charts

This chart shows the total number of unique pageviews to the COVID-19 Updates landing page per each hour of the day over the current month to date.

Source of Sessions Pie Chart

The pie chart shows the source of sessions to the COVID-19 Updates landing page over the current month to date.

Traffic Volume and Sources Context

This page is meant to give an overview of traffic to the COVID-19 Updates page. It shows views over time, how people are finding this page, and shows when during the day they are most likely to visit. This can help stakeholders get an idea of when to push campaigns and traffic to the page and quickly catch any unwanted drop offs in traffic.

Important note: At the time of writing, there is a spike at 4 p.m. because that is when DPH releases new COVID-19 numbers.

Page Flow (page 2)

All metrics are shown for the current month to date.

Top Table

This table shows the previous page users visited before coming to the COVID-19 Updates page, the source and medium that got them onto the Mass.gov site, and the number of unique pageviews that page path has generated for the current month to date.

Bottom Table

The bottom table is a continuation of the top and shows where users go after they view the COVID-19 Updates landing page. It shows the source and medium that got them onto the Mass.gov site, the previous page path (COVID-19 Updates landing page), the page they go to from the COVID-19 Updates landing page, and the number of unique pageviews for each page.

Page Flow Context

The two tables depict the flow of users through this part of the site. By showing how people got to the page and where they go after viewing the page, we can start to get a sense of what content matters most to users, if there's important content that's not being found, and can hint at if people are having trouble finding the info they need (signaled by going back to previously visited pages).

Search Terms (page 3)

All metrics are shown for the current month to date.

Top Table - Google Search terms, impressions, clicks, and CTR

This table is pulling data from Search Console and shows how organic traffic is coming to the site. Metrics show the device they used, what page they landed on (filtered to show the COVID-19 Updates landing page only by default), the search term they used to find the page, and the total number of impressions, clicks, and click through rate.

The table allows filtering by device type or search term.

Bottom Left Table - search.mass.gov queries from target page

This table shows traffic from search.mass.gov. The data is pulled from the Google Analytics view "Mass.Gov & Search & Calculators" to get cross-domain information with the COVID-19 Updates page as the "previous page path" and the search.mass.gov as "page". A filter is available to allow sorting by search term.

Bottom Right Table - Sampling of search terms from non-Google sources

This table pulls data from Google Analytics from sources that aren't Google. This includes search engines like Bing and Yahoo!. It's important to note that because this data is from Google Analytics and not directly from tools like Bing Webmaster Tools a lot of data has been marked (not set) or (not provided). We have filtered the table to not include this, but they do make up a majority of the clicks. Please take this table with a grain of salt and use it as a guide rather than a fact.

Search Terms Context

All tables give an additional layer of context of how users are looking for the information they need and the terms they are using to find that information. The top table shows the terms users are using to get to the COVID-19 Updates page from the search engine Google, the second table shows the terms people are searching for from the COVID-19 Updates page (signaling they weren't able to find the content they were looking for on the page itself), and the third table shows a sampling of terms from search engines that aren't Google to get a general idea of how people find the COVID-19 Updates page from across the web

Engagement (page 4)

All metrics are shown for the current month to date and compared to the previous period (except the table and funnel).

What do people do when they land on this page?

The first scorecard shows the number of pageviews to the COVID-19 Updates landing page. The line graph underneath shows pageviews by day for the current month to date.

The second scorecard (to the right of the first scorecard) shows the number of pageviews to other pages when the COVID-19 Updates landing page was the previous page the user was on. The line graph underneath shows pageviews when the COVID-19 Updates landing page was the previous page by day for the current month to date.

The third scorecard to the right shows the total number of Ejects for sessions that contained the COVID-19 Updates landing page. This does not mean that the Eject happened on the COVID-19 Updates page. The line graph depicts the number of Ejects by day for the same time period (current month to date).

The fourth scorecard (bottom left of scorecard section) shows the total number of Downloads and Outbound link clicks (clicks to non-mass.gov pages) for sessions that contained the COVID-19 Updates landing page. Again, this does not mean that the downloads or outbound link clicks happened on the COVID-19 Updates page. The line graph depicts the number of Downloads and Outbound Link Clicks by day for the same time period (current month to date). You will notice that the scorecard says "(old data)". This refers to data that was collected prior to DAF refactoring elements that affected this data collection stream beginning in July 2020.

The fifth scorecard (to the right of the fourth) does show Downloads and Outbound link clicks that happened on the COVID-19 Updates page. This is labeled as "(new data)" because it's using data that was only available starting at the beginning of July 2020 due to the GTM refactoring effort from DAF.

Note on the Downloads and Outbound link click scorecards: In the coming months, data will fall off for the scorecard using the old data. At that time we will remove the old scorecard from the report.

User Flow

The funnel shows a flow of users who visit the COVID-19 Updates landing page (top block), then move on to the Response Reporting page (second block), and finally, visitors who completed a download on the Response Reporting page (third block).

Calculations

The first block is all pageviews of the COVID-19 Updates landing pages.

The second block is all pageviews of the Response Reporting page when the previous page was the COVID-19 Updates landing page.

The third block is the same as the second block, but also filters sessions by the new eventTarget Internal, outbound, or download for "downloads". This allows us to show the amount of downloads that took placed based on this specific flow.

Clicks to Other Websites

Similar to the Outbound and Downloads scorecards above, the Clicks to Other Websites tables were also affected by the GTM refactor in July 2020. We have created two tables, one which looks at the old data and one that pulls the refactored data. Once data has fallen off for the legacy table, we will remove it from the dashboard.

This old data table shows the outbound links that were clicked and the total number of clicks on the COVID-19 Updates landing page during a session for the current month to date.

The new data table shows the outbound links that were clicked and the total number of clicks on the COVID-19 Updates landing page for the current month.

Engagement Context

This page is meant to help content strategist get an idea of how people are engaging with the COVID-19 page, how they move on to other areas of the site, and hopefully take action.

Segments

All metrics are shown for the current month to date.

Top Section (pie charts and bar chart)

The top section shows metrics for age, device type, and user type (new or returning user) for pageviews to the COVID-19 Updates landing page.

Bottom Section (pie chats and bar chart)

The bottom section shows the same metrics, but for all pageviews across Mass.gov.

Segments Context

This page is meant to serve as a snapshot of the type of users visiting the COVID-19 Updates landing page and how that compares to the general users of the Mass.gov site. This helps content strategist get an idea of who their customer is, what they care about, and the best of messaging and platform to reach them on.

Clicks by Heading (page 6)

All metrics are shown for the current month to date.

Clicks by link group (COVID-19 info & updates section headers)

This section displays scorecards showing the total number of clicks on section headers and total clicks for each section header individually. Each scorecard also has a simple line graph showing the click breakdown over time for the selected date from the date range selector.

Clicks on links by section header

This table shows the section links that are clicked for each section header. It is sorted by the links with the most clicks and displays what section header they belong under. There is a filter for this table that allows users to select one or multiple headings to view the total clicks for the links contained only for the selected heading(s).

Clicks by Heading Context

This page is meant to help content strategists better understand if people are using the heading links to navigate to the content they find important, what content visitors find most important, if visitors skip headings with lots of links in them, and if they follow through in clicking links to more information contained under the section headings. This data can help strategists draw conclusions around if more or less section links have an impact on user click through rate and other interaction insights.

Trail Map

• Investigate adding table of contents tracking back in GTM. This would allow us to track if people are clicking on the anchor links listed at the top and viewing the content under each section.

• Will need to remove legacy data from dashboard in August