Tips on How Matomo Can Improve Your Archive Services

Reasons to add statistics to your archive are obvious, and if the statistics can provide useful metrics without too much of a hassle, it is even better. Also, as we have already written in a former blogpost it is reassuring that code and content are safe with Matomo. This makes your day as a repository manager a bit easier.

As a repository manager with a DSpace archive, statistics can be at bit daunting. Today most DSpace archives are integrated with a statistical tool of some kind, often Google analytics or Plum. Some will be using the built-in statistics in DSpace. On the KnowledgeArc platform we have chosen Matomo statistics, a world leading open source statistical tool. This can be easily adapted to fit your or your organisation’s needs when it comes to statistics.

Matomo can provide valuable information.

Depending on where your DSpace archive is placed within your organisation`s digital ecology, the Matomo statistics can give you insights in to specific parts of the user journey based on your needs for information. You can yourself decide what statistics you want accessible from your dashboard so that the metrics are visualised the way that makes the most sense to you. The dashboard is your private statistical workspace where all your statistics are accessible. You can also get your developer/hosters to embed statistics in to your Dspace to make, for instance, statistics about each item in your repository available in your item-view. You can find an example on the KA hosted Henderson Arcivhe.

Heatmaps and Sessions

If you have the need for a more in-depth knowledge about your visitors or their behaviour in their meeting with your services, your dashboard can easily be customised to fit these needs. Let me give you examples of features which can be helpful to solve specific challenges related to your archive.

Let`s say that you, for whatever reason, have one, or several, archives with multiple search and browse options available (simple search, advanced search, browsing). You also get feedback from your visitors that they don’t understand where to go to search for specific material. In such a case you would probably have to rethink the structure of this/these pages.

To solve these issues Matomos features, like Heatmaps or Sessions Recordings can come in handy. Heatmaps is a feature which can be set up to a specific web page and will show you visually where your users click, where they scroll the mouse, or how far down the page they scroll. This feature will give you insights in to where on the page you users are active, and also which parts of the page they are not visiting. If you then have some vital information about, for instance you browse and search options, at a part of you page where the visitor is not spending any time, then off course she will be missing out on that important information.

Another feature which could be helpful is Sessions Recordings. This feature will analyse how your visitors are interacting with your website by recording how they are navigating their way through your webpage. When the recordings are done you will be able to replay and analyse every interaction your visitor has done on the selected pages. It will also give you an enhanced user analytic showing you for instance what other pages this exact user has been visiting.

Ask us if you need some more information about Matomo or our services.