To better understand learners’ behavior and experience such as when and where they load, play or pause a course video, and learner demographics such as age, gender, country, region, and even key words that they search the most, we are exploring and implementing tools for collecting and analyzing user data. Since many of our contents are webpages embedded with videos, I was asked to compare and contrast Google Analytics and Vimeo Stats and propose a viable yet effective method to analyze learner data. The following reports examined the affordance and limitations of both tools with the conclusion that the combination of them faciliated with Vimeo.ga.js is the best way to get a holistic picture of the learner experience.

Introduction to Vimeo Stats

If we are Vimeo Basic member, we will be able to view our total weekly stats on the home page. If we are Plus and Pro members, we can visit the “Advanced Stats” page for all the advanced data pertaining to our video and set the time range of data (week, month, year, all-time, or customize a certain date/period).

All three types of membership can view the General Statistics as summarized below, while Plus and Pro members can also see where their videos are embedded at which time period. For detailed options, please see Embed below. Plus and Pro members can also track the country of their viewers. For detailed information, see Geographic below.

General Statistics

Vimeo is basically able to track

Total Plays-- times when the Play button is pushed
Total Loads-- times when the video player load
Total Finishes-- times when a video is watched from the beginning to the end
Likes-- number of likes
Comments-- number of comments

The data are presented in numerical and visual format

There are more detailed data categories available on Vimeo Stats, please see the graph below.

Embed:

Embed section compares the data of “Total Plays” VS Total Loads on the web sites where vimeo videos are embedded. User are able to customer a time range. The following graph shows the format of data presentation and data categories that are allowed to be tracked.

Geographic

Users are only able to track the Total Loads and Plays in a certain country (no data about province, city, etc.). However, they can still set limit to a certain time period.

The following graph shows the data presentation format and data categories available for track.

Additional Resources

For FAQs of implementing Vimeo Stats please go to this website:

https://vimeo.com/help/faq/managing-your-videos/stats

For General information, demo, Plus/Pro plan please go to this website:

https://vimeo.com/stats

Brief Review of Google Analytics

Overview

Google Analytics Data model mainly include 3 components: User, Session, Interaction.

The diagram illustrates this model for a single visitor to your site, where each block represents the number of user sessions and interactions from that particular user.

Each level in this model is defined as follows:

User (visitor)—the client that visits the site, such as the browser or mobile phone operated by a person.
Session (visit)—the period of time during which the visitor is active on the site.
Interaction (hit)—the individual activities that send a hit to the Analytics servers. These are typically characterized by a pageview, but can include: a pageview, an event (e.g. click on a movie button), etc.

https://analyticsacademy.withgoogle.com/course02/assets/html/GoogleAnalyticsAcademy-PlatformPrinciples-Lesson1.3-OverviewoftheGoogleAnalyticsdatamodel-Resource.html

Available reports that may be relevant to PKE purpose

Acquisition Reporting

Mainly tracks the traffic source from which the user find the website.

Audience Reporting

Focus on your audience: demographics, interests, language and location, industry benchmarks, as well as what devices and operating systems are being used.

Cohort analysis

Examine the behavior and performance of groups of users related by common attributes

Performance Reporting

Site Speed reports shows you load times across your site, so you can fix slow pages and increase conversions.

Site Reporting

Site reporting facilitate understanding about how users engage with a website. Flow Visualization reports let you see and analyze the path a visitor takes on your site, while In-Page Analytics gives the detail about how they interact with each page. When users can’t find what they're looking for, they search. Site Search reporting in Google Analytics helps you see what your visitors are really looking for, spot missed opportunities, and speed up time to conversion.

Vimeo VS Google Analytics

Pros and Cons

It seems to me that Vimeo is better at tracking video-specific events such as “loads”, “plays”, “finishing rate” while GA focuses more on behaviors on the webpage. For example how much time a user spends on a web page or whether they click on a button.

User behavior

Although GA can track how much time a user spends on a web page, Vimeo Stats is better at tracking users’ behavior in terms of whether they played a video, or whether they finished a video. However, Vimeo Stats is not able to offer further details such as whether the user paused, resumed or skipped a video. Neither can it track percentage of progress (it can only tell users whether the viewers finished the video or not).

Traffic Source

Both Vimeo and GA can track “traffic source” websites (i.e. the other websites that lead users to the web page that is under monitor). Vimeo cares more about where a video is embedded (which may not really be useful as all the videos are embedded on the NODT page as we already know), but GA is able to track where do users find the NODT page. However, if the NODT is sold to client and is only accessible through direct and fixed directory, the traffic source data from GA is not very meaningful.

User demographics

Although Vimeo and GA can both track information about users, GA provides much more comprehensive reports. While Vimeo can only track country of viewers, GA further breaks geographic data into city, continent, and subcontinent. GA is also able to track the language, age, gender, and even interests of users. In the meantime, GA can track whether a user is a new user or a returning user, although the data may be affected if a user constantly delete the cookies embedded in web browser.

Vimeo.ga.js

Vimeo.ga.js is a Google Analytics plugin for measuring Vimeo Player Events. It complements both GA and Vimeo Stats in the following aspects:

Event Tracking

Actions able to track:
Started video: when the video starts playing.
Paused video: when the video is paused.
Resumed video: when the video starts playing when it was paused.
Completed video: when the video reaches 100% completion.
Skipped video: when the video is skipped forward or backward.

Progress event trackers
Actions able to track:
25% Progress: when the video reaches 25% of the total video time.
50% Progress: when the video reaches 50% of the total video time.
75% Progress: when the video reaches 75% of the total video time.

Vimeo.ga.js can also be used with Google Tag Manager. For more information please see this website: https://github.com/sanderheilbron/vimeo.ga.js

The implementation of Vimeo.ga.js may require support from web developer.