An overview of Sitecore Analytics

Powered by the Experience Database (xDB), Sitecore analytics displays insightful analytics reports. These reports empower marketers to make informed decisions on budgets, improve the user experience and ultimately increasing conversions.

The two key Sitecore analytics applications in the Sitecore Experience Platform are accessible via the Sitecore launchpad:

• Experience Analytics

• Experience Profile

Experience Analytics

Sitecore Experience Analytics measures the engagement of website visitors and the performance of pages, assets and more.

Sitecore uses the Engagement Value metric to measure the effectiveness of the site on a visitor's user journey.

Engagement Value Points (EVP) are assigned to Sitecore goals. Goals are a conversion metric. The values of goals are based on their relative importance, with the most important goals, such as a purchase, being the most valuable and so given a high EVP. Other goals could be micro-conversions such as watching a video or downloading a whitepaper given lower EVP values. The goals and their values assigned are dependent on business requirements and digital objectives.

Sitecore calculates a metric called Value Per Visit based on the average value accumulated during each visit. For example, a goal with 100 EVP is triggered by 2 visitors. The Value per Visit would be 100 (200 total EVP / 2 visits).

Understanding how your website visitors engage with your content is vital. It allows you to make important decisions about your marketing effort.

Decisions on user journeys, conversion rates, pinch points, campaign performance, budgets and optimisation will carry more clarity.

The Experience Analytics dashboard displays a list of categories, each with their own Overview and set of additional measurements accessible via four tabs:

1. Audience

2. Acquisition

3. Behaviour

4. Conversions

1. Audience

The Audience tab helps you understand who your visitors are. This tab is broken down into the following categories:

• Devices: Shows the devices used to access your website

• Languages: Displays default language as well as other language versions (if configured)

• Locations: Provides metrics on which countries your visitors are from

• Pattern matches: Shows information on pattern matches based on profile cards assigned to content

2. Acquisition

The Acquisition tab provides valuable insights on what is driving traffic to your website. In other words, are your campaigns and marketing channels effective? The tab is broken down into:

• Channels: Which channels are bringing in the most traffic? This measurement enables you to see the channels that visitors enter your website through

• Campaigns: All your Sitecore campaigns are tracked in Experience Analytics. Knowing how they perform can empower you to make changes where necessary

• Campaign facets: These are part of Sitecore's Marketing Taxonomies. Applying custom campaign facets to your campaigns will enable you to drill down even further in their performance

• Referring sites: Which websites your visitors are entering your website from

3. Behaviour

The Behaviour tab provides an insight on the behaviour of your website visitors. This tab displays the following:

• Assets: Categorises downloadable assets by group like PDFs etc.

• Pages: Displays the best performing entry and exit pages by URL and item

4. Conversions

The Conversions tab is all about whether visits have been turned into conversions. This tab displays:

• Goals: The goals dashboard shows the best performing goals based on the Value per Visit metric

• Goal facets: If you have applied custom taxonomies to your goals, the facets will be listed here

• Outcomes: These are like goals but more geared to B2B. Outcomes are not configurable in the Marketing Control Panel. To configure Outcomes, talk to your Sitecore Partner

Experience Profile

The Experience Profile application is also available from the launchpad. It displays insights on the activity and behaviour of website visitors who have completed a form.

On entry, the application displays:

• Name

• Email

• Value (Latest visit)

• Value (Total)

• Number of visits

• Value/Visit

• Visit duration

• Location

• Last interaction

Clicking on a visitor's name displays the information in the Overview tab. This shows metrics like visits, page events, personalisation events and more.

The Activity tab, provides information on:

• Visits: Page views and events

• Outcomes: The Outcomes reached

• Campaigns: The campaigns the visitor triggered 

• Channels: The channels the visitor entered your website from

• Goals: The goals the visitor triggered 

• Marketing automation campaigns: Whether the visitor is part of a marketing automation campaign

• Keywords: Internal. external and paid keywords used to enter your website

Pattern match information is displayed in the Profiling tab. Here, you can see whether the visitor matched any profiles during their visit i.e. visited profiled pages.

The Details tab provides general information based on the fields populated in the form. This is determined by the fields being mapped appropriately so they surface in the Experience Profile.

The information in the xDB can be synchronised with a CRM.

Other features in the Experience Profile include the ability to anonymise visitors’ profiles and to view an overall activity timeline for a visitor.

Sitecore Analytics isn't limited to the Experience Analytics and Profile applications, however. The data collected by the Sitecore xDB is a powerful asset. Detailed reports allow marketers to identify patterns and trends on a variety of campaign and optimisation activities:

• Marketing Automation campaigns: In the Marketing Automation application you can track behaviour by creating automation campaigns based on user journeys, goals, triggers, and actions

• Email campaigns: In the Email Experience Manager (EXM) you can build email campaigns and measure recipient activity

• AB and MV tests: Testing page components allows you to see how effective each variant is. And testing different pages against each other provides greater insights into the effectiveness of different page layouts

• Personalisation dashboard: This is in the Experience Optimisation application. The dashboard displays all personalised experiences on the website

• Path Analyser: Track the 'paths' your visitors take through your website

Working with Codehouse

Get the very best from Sitecore analytics. Get in touch. Talk to our Digital Experience team to align your marketing strategy with Sitecore’s powerful marketing tools.