Visitor Analytics

OuterSpatial's visitor analytics are a work-in-progress and their structure will change as we work through full implementation. We plan on improving them incrementally based on feedback from our customers, so please let us know what you think!

We implemented detailed analytics in OuterSpatial Mobile incrementally over the course of 2020. Because of this, there are some inconsistencies in the analytics data prior to November 2020. Take a look at the "Additional Notes" section at the bottom of this article for more information.

Overview

Traditional user engagement metrics don't necessarily apply to OuterSpatial Mobile, which is designed to be used by visitors while they're adventuring outdoors. For OuterSpatial Mobile, a successful interaction for a visitor may be getting them in and out of the app as quickly as possible so they can find what they're looking for and then get back to enjoying their time outside.

Because of this, rather than measuring "stickiness" by how long an average user session lasts or how many screens a user interacts with during a given session, we recommend measuring how "useful" a visitor finds the app by tracking the number of screens an average visitor interacts with and how many sessions an average visitor opens during a given time period. Even these metrics, however, don't necessarily do a perfect job measuring user engagement, so we recommend taking them as a general, high-level way to track user engagement and then looking at the more detailed engagement metrics like posts created, bookmarks created, etc. to dive in deeper.

Metrics

Usage

The "Community: Usage" report gives you a high-level overview of how many unique visitors have interacted with a community your organization is part of over the course of a designated period of time.

The following columns are available in the current iteration of the "community-usage" CSV file:

1. community: The name of the Community.
2. android_user_count: The total count of unique Android users that used this Community over the course of the designated time period. (See "Note 1" below.)
3. ios_user_count: The total count of unique iOS users that used this Community over the course of the designated time period.
4. total_user_count: The total count of unique users (Android + iOS) that used this Community over the course of the designated time period. (See "Note 1" below.)
5. android_screens_per_user: The average number of screens each Android user in this Community interacted with over the course of the designated time period. (See "Note 1" below.)
6. ios_screens_per_user: The average number of screens each iOS users in this Community interacted with over the course of the designated time period.

Engagement

The "Organization: Screen Engagement" report gives you a detailed rundown of how many times your organization's screens have been viewed over the course of a designated period of time. This report tracks each screen view individually, even if performed by the same visitor.

The following columns are available in the current iteration of the "organization-screen-engagement" CSV file:

1. community: The name of the Community.
2. organization: The name of your Organization.
3. parent_area: If a location ("Area, "Outing", "Point of Interest", or "Trail"), the name of the parent area, if the location has a parent area.
4. entity_name: The name of the screen.
5. entity_type: The type of the OuterSpatial entity for the screen. This can be one of "Area", "Article", "Challenge", "Document", "Event", "Organization", "Outing", "Paper Map", "Point of Interest", or "Trail"
6. entity_id: The id of the OuterSpatial entity for the screen.
7. u_id: If a location ("Area", "Point of Interest", or "Trail") that was imported from your organization's GIS, the unique identifier provided by your organization.
8. android_count: The number of times this screen has been viewed within this Community on Android devices over the course of the designated time period. (See "Note 1" below.)
9. ios_count: The number of times this screen has been viewed within this Community on iOS devices over the course of the designated time period.
10. total_count: The total number of times this screen has been viewed within this Community on all devices (Android + iOS) over the course of the designated time period. (See "Note 1" below.)

Additional Notes

1. Note 1: We did not start collecting Android analytics in our proprietary analytics system until May 2020, so Android analytics are not available until this month.
2. Note 2: Prior to November 2020, there was an Android bug that prevented community screen views from being tracked properly. This had a significant impact on the analytics.