Google Analytics For 1 Page Sites

[fujiprovince]

Hello,

I have been using google analytics for a couple of weeks now on a few sites that I have running and the data it provides is fascinating. However, I have it running on my own personal site, which is just a small portfolio of the work that I have completed so far, and this site consists of only 1 page. How can you measure what people are doing on your site for that one page as opposed to being able to tell, for instance, that 60% of your visitors are going to the 'about' page of a 6 page site?

[alecrust]

I'm confused as to exactly what your question is?

[fujiprovince]

Sorry, re-reading that it sounds confusing.

I have google analytics running on a few sites I have built for other people and can gather information on what the users have been doing on that site, i.e spending most of the time on 'page x' or spending the least time on 'page y' etc.

However my own personal site is all on one html page, there are only 3 sections within the page (client work, personal work, contact) and this is split into staggered sections down the page, so the navigation just hooks onto the divs within that 1 page. It is not live yet so is hard to explain but the layout is very similar to this site to give you a better idea www.francescomugnai.com

How can google analytics work on something similar to that, as obviosuly the user is going to spend 100% of their time on 1 page but be viewing different sections within that 1 page.

Hope thats easier, it's kind of a more general question I guess

[alecrust]

Ah I understand. But the simple fact is it wont be able to give you the same sort of thing (45% at About, 10% at Contact etc.) because Google Analytics cannot record where on the page the user has scrolled to (even if they use jump links).

The only thing I can see being of some help is the Site Overlay feature where you can see what links are clicked the most on a page.

Hope that was some help.

[fujiprovince]

Yep it was, cheers. Kinda confirmed what I had presumed. Just thought maybe you might be able to modify it so it could hook onto certain parts of the sites for its analytics as oppose to just individual pages. I have not looked at the Site Overlay feature, seems that might be enough to satisfy the information I need, gonna check it out now.

Thanks.

[alecrust]

Unfortunately not. Would be cool though. Even if they did have that feature, not everyone would move to each section of your site using the jump links, but rather by scrolling. Obviously there is no way for Google Analytics to determine at what scroll point the user is on a page.

[fujiprovince]

No doubt in the future analytics packages will include real time eye tracking features

[alecrust]

I wouldn't put it past Google

[JJMcClure]

Why don't you just split it into 3 pages.

[alecrust]

That's the style of site he went for. All on one page. I've seen some pretty cool sites built in the same way. The one he linked to is a good example.

[plumsauce]

Maybe you could achieve the same effect using iframes.

Then, you could embed the tracking code in each page making up the iframe.

Note however, that because the "page" is now separate sub components that it will take longer to load.

[Chapichupapa]

Hello,

I have been using google analytics for a couple of weeks now on a few sites that I have running and the data it provides is fascinating. However, I have it running on my own personal site, which is just a small portfolio of the work that I have completed so far, and this site consists of only 1 page. How can you measure what people are doing on your site for that one page as opposed to being able to tell, for instance, that 60% of your visitors are going to the 'about' page of a 6 page site?

I don't really understand what you trying to say!!!

[alecrust]

Chapichupapa he made it clearer in his second post.

[morph07]

Is that an AJAX? Maybe you can make your own site statistics by counting the clicks made on your site by some scripts.

[alecrust]

Yes, but my point above still stands. No script will be able to determine where a user has scrolled to on a page, and I would imagine that a high percentage of users would do just that.

[fujiprovince]

Why don't you just split it into 3 pages.

I just wanted to try something different, I quite like some of the one page sites I have come across, they have a simplicity about them which is nice. There is a good selection of them here, (don't worry its not a porn link )

http://onepagelove.com/

Another reason to be honest is I don't have alot of content at the minute as I am kinda just starting out and feel it would get lost on a bigger site, this will suffice for now.

One of my favourite one page sites is

www.sure.sk

I feel that site works quite well.

Not had a look at i frames before, will take a closer look, but maybe like alecrust says, people will just be scrolling down anyway.

[alecrust]

Can I suggest that you don't look at the frames option. Here is something I wrote for work the other day about frames:

- Many lower versions of Internet Explorer have problems handling frames. Some freeze especially if the user’s computer isn’t very powerful.

- If a user has been clicking around an iframe, and then decides he/she wants to bookmark that page on sitename, because the iframe is the active element, some browsers will bookmark the iframe link rather than the sitename page (if that makes sense!).

- Can sometimes cause user’s Back button to stop working if the frame is the active element.

- They cause no end of problems if the page is printed.

- Some browsers don’t support frames at all (WebTV) although granted this is a very small proportion of users.

- Search engines hate them. That doesn’t matter much in this instance because of the content, but we wouldn’t want to do anything that might possibly harm our SEO.

[aleish]

I use CrazyEgg in tracking where visitors went from my lading page.