How many people check out my SharePoint site? An explanation with 3 use cases of SharePoint Online analytics

As a SharePoint Online author, contributor or owner, one of the most important things you can do to increase the reach of your content is to understand how analytics work in SharePoint Online. In this article, we'll explore 2 different perspectives on analytics in SharePoint Online, and how they can help you make better decisions about the content you create and share with your audience.

As a contributor, analytics are important tools that help you understand how readers interact with your content and how it performs on SharePoint Online. By understanding how readers are consuming your content, you can make adjustments to your writing and design to improve the user experience.

With the help of analytics, owners can gain insight into user activity on the site and see how content is being consumed. For example, you can review page visits and identify peak activity times. This allows you to better understand user behavior and make informed decisions about how to best optimize your site for user engagement.

This article is based on one I wrote back in 2019 showing the existing analytics at that time. Therefore, the current article is an update with the features existing today. You can visit my previous article at the following link, How many people are working on my SharePoint site?

So, what are the metrics that SharePoint offers at this moment?

When it comes to analytics in SharePoint, one must understand that the data presented is quite basic and does not compare to tools such as Google Analytics. While not intended as a rival, SharePoint does provide some fundamental insights that can help us understand user behavior.

You can easily view analytics for any page or news post, simply select the Analytics option at the top of the page. The new pane will show the following information:

• Page viewers: area chart showing the number of unique users that access the page for the last 7 days, last 30 days and last 90 days. Besides, you can see the lifetime unique viewers,

• Page views: area chart showing the total number of views of the page for the last 7 days, last 30 days and last 90 days. Besides, you can see the lifetime total visits,

• Average time spent per user: area chart showing the average time users spent on the page. SharePoint mobile app is not supported in this chart.

• Page traffic by time: heat trend map that shows the visits to the page per hour per weekday. The darker the box is the most visits the page received at this hour and day. You can show this information for the last 7 days, last 30 days and last 90 days,

In order to view data related to the usage of your site, the owners should first click on the Settings icon located in the gear icon.

Under Site usage analytics section you can find:

• Unique viewers: area chart showing the number of unique users that access any of the site pages, documents or news for the last 7 days, last 30 days and last 90 days. Besides, you can see the lifetime total unique viewers,

• Site visits: area chart showing the number of visits that access any of the site pages, documents or news for the last 7 days, last 30 days and last 90 days. Besides, you can see the lifetime total visits,

• Average time spent per user: area chart showing the average time users spent on the site. SharePoint mobile app is not supported in this chart.

Under Popular content in the last 7 days section you can find:

• Site pages: shows a list of pages with the most views just for the last 7 days. Here you can sort the list by Unique viewers, Visits or Time spent.

• News posts: shows a list of news pages with the most views just for the last 7 days. Here you can sort the list by Unique viewers, Visits or Time spent.

• Documents: sshows a list of files and documents with the most views just for the last 7 days. Here you can sort the list by Unique viewers, Visits or Time spent.

Under Usage insights section you can find:

• By device: horizontal bar chart showing which platform is the most used by users. You can show this information for the last 7 days, last 30 days and last 90 days,

• By time: heat trend map that shows the visits to the site daily and hourly. The darker the box is the most visits the site received at this hour. You can show this information for the last 7 days, last 30 days and last 90 days,

The last section is Shared with external users that shows a list of files that have been shared externally.

Now that I know the information I get from SharePoint, how can I use it in my benefit?

As I said before, this kind of information can be very basic to people that get used to working with Google Analytics or similar services or applications. But, these charts and data make an administrator able to understand how users use her site.

Let me expose here some examples of what you can know from these metrics:

• Understand when users are active: Checking the Site visits area chart you will see the days where people accessed your site for any reason: if you are maintaining a Newbie Employee site and your company hired several employees one week ago, you will likely be able to see an increase in the site visits for that week.

• Understand when something is really interesting for each employee of the company: Let's imagine you are the administrator of the Internal Communication site and you published relevant news about the company stocks. Checking the Unique viewers chart plus the By time heat map you can report if employees were interested in that news, how many of them and when. That could be important for your company to understand whether the information is relevant or not to the employees.

• Understand people timelines: Let's say your site contains training information. You can determine when are the best hours for your employees to access and learn something new. The By time heat map will show the time employees are ready to learn something. Going further, By device chart will tell you which device they are using to access and learn. That's a good point to understand how the material has to be prepared and be ready for. Don't forget to read the Popular content lists to see the course that most requested for your users.

To wrap up

Here I provided three examples of how SharePoint Online analytics can be used to gain insights and make a better website for your users.

I would love to hear about your experiences and if these metrics have been helpful for you. Please leave a comment to share your thoughts so we can all continue to learn.

References

• How many people are working on my SharePoint site?: https://dev.to/jaloplo/how-many-people-are-working-on-my-sharepoint-site-36oj

• View usage data for SharePoint pages and news: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/view-usage-data-for-sharepoint-pages-and-news-e3186199-ccc8-4445-9162-bb1bcec8b7ee

• View usage data for your SharePoint site: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/view-usage-data-for-your-sharepoint-site-2fa8ddc2-c4b3-4268-8d26-a772dc55779e

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