Reading your Analytics

Modified on Thu, 8 Aug at 11:07 AM

Analytics can be displayed and viewed in multiple ways.  Changing the time frame and summarization data, you can control the charts below and get the data that’s most useful to you.


If you have sub-layers, then all of the data for them are ‘“rolled up” into the parent organization and included in the data. You can still view the analytics for a sub-layer separately if you wish.

To download a csv file of your analytics: select “Download Analytics''. Once selected, it will download a zip file of the reports for the settings you have currently selected. The downloaded data for 'APP: Views for the Most Popular 30 POIs' will include app viewed POIs, not just the top 30.

You can control whether the Driftscape for Web analytics are added in some charts with the ‘Include 'Driftscape for Web’ user metrics’ option (on by default). When enabled, the POI view charts will include extra web app data. The visitor charts and tables are not impacted (since we do not track the location of Driftscape for Web users).

The Restrict to visitors who have viewed at least one POI option further constrains the visit data tables to only include data for users that have viewed a POI in this organization. For example, a Driftscape user who has been in your region, but did not open a POI (in the reporting period), would not added to the counts.

NoteBy default, the measurement values in the analytics tables, where present, are in metric units (kilometers). But you can change this to imperial (miles) with the ‘Units’ field settings in the top area of the analytics screen, as shown below.


What each chart represents:

Table: Summary of All POI Views in the Period

This table shows you how many times your content was viewed, by day, week and month. Some technical details:

  • Content in your sub-layers is automatically included in this table.

  • Opening a tour stop is considered a POI view in this table data. For example, if a user opened a tour, then 3 of the stops in that tour, it would count as 4 POI views (one for the tour itself, and three for the tour stops).

  • Opening hidden content, or password protected content, also counts towards POI views.


Table: Views for the Most Popular 30 POIs in the Period

This table shows you the most popular features in the time period you selected. 

For example, if you selected ‘Last 3 months’ at the top, then it shows you the 30 most popular features in the last 3 months.  Some technical details:

  • How tour stops are handled in this table depends on the 'List tour stop views separately' setting at the top of the analytics page:

  • When not checked on (the default), tour stops are not displayed, but instead, each tour stop viewing will count toward the main tour overview POI count (which includes openings of the main tour).

  • When checked on, tour stops are listed separately in the table, and do not count into the main tour overview.

  • If you want to know how many people viewed your tour, the best measure is to turn on this setting, and look at the count for the main tour overview itself. Remember, this will exclude tour stop views.

  • If you want to know how many people completed a tour (i.e. to the last stop), turn on this settings, and use the data for the last stop in the tour: if they viewed it, then they completed the tour.

  • All types of POI will show up (hidden content, password protected).

  • The inclusion of web app feature views is controlled with a setting at the top of this analytic page.


Table: Region Visits in the Period

The “Region Visits” chart shows you ”how far your visitors traveled to get to your location”/ how many Driftscape mobile app users were in your geographic region in each time period.

By default, the CMS calculates this data by taking into consideration the distance between the centroid of your organization’s region (this is NOT the center of your geographical region but the center of all your mapped POIs) to the user's home location. 

  • Should you wish to see data for distance a user traveled from their home location to the nearest edge of your region instead of the center of your organization's region, select the Use the region boundary (rather its the centre) for the 'Region Visitors Distances' table option while setting the filters of your analytics.

Some technical details:

  • This functionality only works for users that have enabled GPS location tracking for the Driftscape app. 

    • Note: both iOS and Android, recent changes make it harder for users to turn on location tracking in all apps. For example, in iOS, users can only enable location tracking initially “while using the app”, which means Driftscape will not get new location updates when the app is not running in the foreground. Users can later switch to allow Driftscape to “always track location”, but it requires further steps from the user, and iOS always makes the primary user option to be to turn location tracking off. The end result is many Driftscape users may intentionally or accidentally disable settings that lessen the amount of data we can track in this and other location-based tables.

  • With location tracking enabled, Driftscape will get occasional location updates which are sent to our server, which are used to generate this data.

  • This table has nothing to do with POI views or the viewing habits of the user in the app, only user locations.

  • This data does not include any Driftscape for Web data at all, since the web app cannot determine accurate location data for a user.

  • This table only shows unique user visits per time period, per day: if a user has more than one tracked location in the organization’s region in a day in that time period, it only counts once in that bar.

  • A unique user is defined by an installation of the Driftscape app on a device. 

    • Note: if a user uninstalls and reinstalls the app, that is in effect a new user of the app and would report twice in the above analytics. iOS and Android no longer allow developers to track device-specific user information, to prevent unscrupulous targeted advertising.

  • The region for an organization is defined by the rectangular bounding box for all of its POIs (and POIs in sub-layers). Tour stops are not considered in this bounding box calculation.

  • NOTE: September 2022 saw some updates made to the Driftscape analytics thereby improving the way these stats were calculated:

    • The computation of the bounding region for an organization was improved to make the box more concise.

    • We have recreated all of the Visits data going back to October 2021. Thereby improving the accuracy of your data. You may notice a variation in numbers due to the above stated analytics tracking improvements.

  • If your organization has POIs covering a very large area (i.e. a whole province or country), then this table and all the visit data may not be very meaningful, and will tend to reflect performance results for Driftscape in general, not just your organization.

Table: Home Location of Region Visitors

This table shows you the postal code or zip code prefix (FSA code) for the home location of visitors in the region for the time period selected. Some technical details:

  • Postal code prefixes show you the general location of the user. Here is a SAMPLE MAP of FSA codes in Canada. Here is a SIMILAR ONLINE TOOL FOR US ZIP CODES.

  • The 'Show visitor analytics with full postal code' setting at the top can be turned on to further refine the data in these charts down to exact postal code.

  •  The distances provided are from the center of the postal region to the center of the organization bounding box, if the “Use the region boundary…” analytics setting is turned off. If that setting is turned on, then the distance is to the intersection of the bounding box perimeter. In the latter case, it is possible to have distances of zero, if the center of the postal region is inside the bounding box.

  • The same caveats about users enabling GPS location tracking noted above apply to the data in this table.

  • Driftscape has a proprietary algorithm for determining the home location of a user from their tracked location data. It could take a few weeks of app usage before we determine a high probability home location for an app user. An app user without a determined home location will not show up in these results.

Table: Region Visitors Distances in the Period

This table shows for each user that has visited inside the organization region, how far away their home location is from the region itself.  Some technical details:

  • The values in the Total column will correspond to the values in the “Region Visits in the Period” table.

  • The distances are from the center of the organization region, unless the  “Use the region boundary…” is turned on,  in which case the distance is from the edge of the bounding area. If the home location is inside the organization region and the setting is enabled, then the distance is reported in the “< .5 KM” column.

Table: Region Visitors Linger Times in the Period

This table shows you how long visitors stay in your organization region. Some technical details:

  • This data does not depend on the user home location at all.

  • For each day in the period for which a user has been in the organization region, we determine the time between their first and last tracked location event. This determines their linger time.

  • If a user visits a region but never leaves it on that day of data, then their linger time will add to the “> 12 HR” column. This can happen with users that live in the organization region.

  • If a user has disabled location tracking in the background, then this will lead to shorter linger times for them, since the app will not have locations for them as the move around with Driftscape closed.

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