ACP >> Statistics >> Online Users

[Clover13]

Is it possible to see the Daily or Monthly totals for guest vs member activity?  The charts seem to be various checkpoints throughout the day.  How can I determine totals over a given period of time?

[Clover13]

Deleted as I realized this is a sum of various counts at 15 minute checkpoints throughout the day, not the unique guest vs member users in a day.

[bfarber]

We do not store the historical totals you are inquiring about - we store the totals at different points throughout the day as you noted, but there is no way to track how many of those sessions are unique.

[Clover13]

@bfarber, thanks for the reply! 

I can use GA for most of the analytics I need, but I can't get any delineation between members vs guests since it's proprietary to IPS.  I guess I could use a custom tracker in GA to capture members by username, track their visits/pageviews and compare it to the native GA totals.  Then add that tracker to the IPS theme.  

My current use case in this instance is trying to identify the guest vs member trends in order to assess the "value" of placing ads for guests vs members.  Determining "value" is really the balance of whether it's worthwhile to post X number of ads for members (gaining that ad revenue) vs the impact to member participation/engagement and therefore content (i.e. no one really likes to see ads and guests don't add content which is of more value than the ads).  If guests are the predominant page views, and members are yielding a much lesser return, I can decrease the ads for members (maybe as an upgrade or just in general to encourage registration and further encourage more engagement). 

This really comes down to pageviews more so, as I could have more guest visits but I might have more member views (ad impressions) across pages.  And if I have different ad placement models for members vs guests, I need a way to determine the trending and make adjustments.  Right now it's just a blackbox blend of both members and guests (unless I'm overlooking something).

It's certainly worthwhile in my case to have insights into those member vs guest metrics to be able to effectively manage the ads (among other aspects of the site).  Maybe something worth considering as an enhancement for IPS stats or maybe you have an alternate strategy you could recommend?

 

[bfarber]

I think your best option since there is no standard built in metric to gauge this, is to implement a custom Google Analytics tracking data point (a custom metric).

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2709828

You would set up the custom metric in GA, then you would add the appropriate code in the Invision Community templates after the analytics code is embedded. i.e. edit globalTemplate to change

		{{if settings.ipbseo_ga_enabled}}
			{setting="ipseo_ga"}
		{{endif}}

to

		{{if settings.ipbseo_ga_enabled}}
			{setting="ipseo_ga"}
		{{endif}}

// Set value for custom metric at index 1.
ga('set', 'cm1', {{if \IPS\Member::loggedIn()->member_id}}'member'{{else}}'guest'{{endif}});

ga('send', 'pageview');

Note you would also need to remove the send pageview line (the last line in the code sample above) from the setting where you've entered it in.

This may require a little research in setting up GA custom metrics and properly tracking them, but I think that will be your best long term solution personally.

[Clover13]

Thanks for the details @bfarber!  I'll look into that approach and see how it works out!