Skip to main content

Web analytics

Web analytics are aggregated data reports about your website's traffic. Analytics can help you understand how users are finding your site and what they're doing when they get there.

Google analytics

Accessing Google Analytics reports

Most Cascade sites will have an associated account in Google Analytics (GA).

Contact the Senior Web Officer to get access to your site's GA reports. You will need to have a Google account with your UVic info first (steps on how to set this up). You can't use your personal Google/Gmail account to access UVic analytics reports.

Universal analytics (UA) vs Google analytics 4 (GA4)

As of July 2023, properties in Google's older analytics tool (known as Universal Analytics) will no longer receive data.

We have migrated all active Cascade sites to a GA4 analytics property. If you need support getting access to your site's GA4 data contact the Senior Web Officer.

Understanding Google Analytics reports

Event tracking (GA4)

An “event” is a specific interaction with your website/page. Understanding more about these "touchpoints" can help you measure how engaged your audience is with your website and which content they are most interested in.

Learn how events are configured and tracked in GA4 reports

UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) codes

You may have seen some extra information at the end of a URL, such as:

https://www.uvic.ca/event/distinguished-alumni-awards/index.php?utm_campaign=distinguished_alumni&utm_medium=print&utm_source=qr-code

This information (known as URL parameters) provides us with valuable data about our web traffic. We can view the data in our analytics reports to learn more about how people access web pages.

Anatomy of a UTM

In the above example, we have assigned the following parameters to this link:

  • campaign: distinguished_alumni (this link was created for the Distinguished Alumni Awards campaign)
  • medium: print (this link was used in a print document)
  • source: QR Code (this link was contained in a QR code)

Using UTM parameters is essential to understanding where our web traffic is coming from. It tells us how successful our digital campaigns have been by:

  • allowing us to understand which campaigns are generating the most traffic
  • identifying which channels are driving the most traffic and conversions

We can use this data to optimize our campaigns, and adjust our spending on paid marketing tactics.

Build your own UTM parameters

UVic uses an online tool called UTM.io to generate links for our campaigns with UTM parameters attached.

Need help?