Marketplace - Online Session Activity Dashboard

The Online Session Activity dashboard is a combination of widgets: Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), focused metric tables, graphic displays of your data, data tables that can be quickly exported to a spreadsheet for further analysis. The data displayed on the dashboard is intended to give you actionable insights into customer and guest behavior on your website; volume of visits, average number of visits, single or repeat visits - and how these metrics trend over time. Two separate exportable data tables give you details at the customer and guest level.

A session is defined as a single date with a unique session id.

You will see a link to this document in the heading of the dashboard, click on Dashboard Help to access the document.

KPIs

At the top of the dashboard, a selection of KPIs reflect the volume and ratio of online sessions for customers and guests, arranged for comparison.  A separate KPI indicates the average number of online sessions per customer in the given timeframe. A useful application of this section is to monitor the volume of traffic in the current month vs. selected time periods, or as compared with expectations from your efforts to attract new customers.  You may have seasonal ebbs & flows to volumes of traffic, and will be able to compare current trends to similar time periods in the past.  You will be able to see how many times during selected time periods that your customers engage with your online platform, and watch for increased activity during targeted marketing efforts.  You might establish goals for increased engagement based on email or social media communications, and test the results with these KPIs.  You can also see over time whether the ratio of customers to guest visitors shifts or remains steady - looking at both the percentages and the volume of visits will be important in this comparison.

Focused Metrics

There are two mini graphics, which you can view by clicking on the Repeat Session Rate and Single Session Rate. A drop-down view of the last 6 month trend will appear when you click on the rates.  Here you can see how many of your customers have engaged multiple times in the selected time period vs. how many engaged a single time. Keep in mind that longer date ranges will affect the volume and ratios of engagement, though they will also give you a longer term perspective.  Again, watch these metrics as you communicate with your customer base to measure response rates for online engagement.  Consider your expected rate of repeat visits, and if those expectations are over or underperformed, and as you identify causes you will be better positioned to improve the rate.  You can export the data in these tables, to work with it outside of the dashboard. Do this by clicking on the 3 dots at the top right corner of the widget, choose Download and export an image or file. The recommended file type for a spreadsheet is CSV.

Graphic Displays

There are sections of graphic displays on the dashboard.  The graphics display trends for volume of customer online sessions, customer vs. guest online sessions and average number of customer sessions.  The trends will help you understand your customer acquisition engagement and the levels of growth.  As well, the ratio of customer and guest engagement can be seen at the same time as your overall engagement; in this graphic you will be able to quickly identify an overall monthly comparison, whether it was customer or guest engagement that was a greater contributor, and how each sector trended over recent months.  Using the customer / guest graphic in conjunction with the average # of customer sessions will help inform where marketing efforts or ad spends might be helpful, or where they may have performed as intended.  If your business has seasonal trends, you can expect them to be reflected here.  Graphics will often tell a story about your business or operations that is not obvious when looking only at metrics.  Look for trends in the data, and which metrics seem to impact the others.  You can make more informed decisions about your business when you combine what your data is telling you with the knowledge you have about influencing factors such as changes to your online platform, targeted advertisements or online customer acquisition efforts.

You will see indicators for average customer and guest sessions per day, for the selected time period.  Use this information to monitor against your expectations and to compare various time periods.  You might use this information to measure the success of an ad campaign or other initiative to entice customer engagement, or to estimate costs of short-term online offers.  For example, look at your average customer sessions per day over a select period of time, and compare it with the same metric immediately following a targeted communication to your customers.  You should be able to measure against your expectations for the communication - for example, if it was to increase visits by a certain number or increase the percentage of customers overall.

Exporting the Data Tables

The data tables at the bottom of the dashboard are granular listings of what is represented in the dashboard.  The tables will react to filters set as you are viewing the dashboard, so you are able to see more details about what is impacting the results.  There may be times when you want to look at this data, filtered or not, in a spreadsheet or image.  By left-clicking on the 3 dots at the top right corner of the table widget, choose Download and export an image or file.  The recommended file type for a spreadsheet is CSV.  This functionality allows you to shape and model your data for reporting, and importantly to inform your business decisions.