Methodological Guidelines for Systematic Assessments of Health Care Websites Using Web Analytics: Tutorial

Abstract

With the growing importance of communicating with the public via the web, many industries have used web analytics to provide information that organizations can use to better achieve their goals. Although the importance of health care websites has also grown, the health care industry has been slower to adopt the use of web analytics. Web analytics are the measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of internet data used to measure direct user interaction. Our objective is to provide generalized methods for using web analytics as key performance metrics to evaluate websites and outline actionable recommendations for improvement. By deconstructing web analytic categories such as engagement, users, acquisition, content, and platform, we describe how web analytics are used to evaluate websites and how improvements can be made using this information. Engagement is how a user interacts with a website. It can be evaluated using the daily active users to monthly active users (DAU/MAU) ratio, bounce rate, pages viewed, and time on site. Poor engagement indicates potential problems with website usability. Users pertains to demographic information regarding the users interacting with a website. This data can help administrators understand who is engaging with their website. Acquisition refers to the overall website traffic and the method of traffic, which allows administrators to see how people are accessing their website. This information helps websites expand their methods of attracting users. Content refers to the overall relevancy, accuracy, and trustworthiness of a website’s content. If a website has poor content, it will likely experience difficulty with user engagement. Finally, platform refers to the technical aspects of how people access a website. It includes both the internet browsers and devices used. By providing detailed descriptions of these categories, we have identified how web administrators can use web analytics to systematically assess their websites. We have also provided generalized recommendations for actionable improvements. By introducing the potential of web analytics to augment usability and the conversion rate, we hope to assist health care organizations in better communicating with the public and therefore accomplishing the goals of their websites.

RocHealthData.org: Development and usage of a publicly available, geographic source of social determinants of health data

“…A free service launched by Google [ 21 ] in November 2005, Google Analytics (GA) allows website administrators to collect visitor data through web analytics and has been used to assess a wide variety of topics, such as developing marketing strategies [ 22 ] and facilitating academic library usage [ 23 ]. We used several common industry standard metrics [ 24 , 25 ] to describe user engagement with the site in 4 areas: visitor type (new and returning), sessions (number and duration per visitor and visitor type), page views (total, including repeated views of a single page and by visitor type), and bounce rate (single page session with no additional site interaction or other pages visited, by visitor type).…”

A Web-Based Intervention for Insufficiently Active College Students: Feasibility and Preliminary Efficacy

“…The use of web analytics to track usage of health websites is an evolving area; however, guided by methods used in industry (ie, analysis of access and duration), these data can provide insightful information on engagement. 22…”

Primary Perspectives in Meme Utilization as a Digital Driver for Medical Community Engagement and Education Mobilization: Pre-Post Study

“…These students (NP, PA, and medical) and residents, upon completion of their degree plans, will receive their DEA-X waiver upon the completion of their training, as well as their official license numbers. The evaluated Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook posts were posted between April 2021 and July 2021 and analyzed by metrics including engagement, users, acquisition, content, and platform [ 15 ].…”

“…Residents and students were incentivized to complete GW’s waiver course preemptively to streamline the waiver acquisition process upon degree completion and conferral of licensure. The variables of interest, including but not limited to engagement, user acquisition, content-associated metrics, and overall platform data, were measured during the 4-month period from April 2021 to July 2021 from GW’s Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook accounts [ 15 ].…”

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