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I have this requirement:
The system will record the length of time the user displayed each page.
While trivial in a rich-client app, I have no idea how people usually go about tracking this.
Edited: By John Hartsock
I have always been curious about this and It seems to me that this could be possible with the use of document.onunload events, to accurately caputure star and stop times for all pages. Basically as long as a user stays on your site you will always be able to get the start and stop time for each page except the last one. Here is the scenario.
The question becomes is it possible to track when a user closes the window or navigates away from your site? Would it be possible to use the onunload events? If not, then what are some other possibilities? Clearly AJAX would be one route, but what are some other routes?
510
I don't think you can capture every single page viewing, but I think you might be able to capture enough information to be worthwhile for analysis of website usage.
Create a database table with columns for: web page name, user name, start time, and end time.
On page load, INSERT a record into the table containing data for the first three fields. Return the ID of that record for future use.
On any navigation, UPDATE the record in the navigation event handler, using the ID returned earlier.
You will end up with a lot more records with start times than records with both start and end time. But, you can do these analyses from this simple data:
It is possible that your data will be distorted by the fact that some pages are abandoned more often than others.
However, you certainly can try to capture this data and see how reasonable it appears. Sometimes in the real world, we have to make due with less than perfect information. But that may be enough.
Edit: Either of these approaches might meet your needs.
1) Here's the HTML portion of an Ajax solution. It's from this page, which has PHP code for recording the information in a text file -- easy enough to change to writing to a database if you wish.
<html>
<head>
<title>Duration Logging Demo</title>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
var oRequest;
var tstart = new Date();
// ooooo, ajax. ooooooo …
if(window.XMLHttpRequest)
oRequest = new XMLHttpRequest();
else if(window.ActiveXObject)
oRequest = new ActiveXObject(“Microsoft.XMLHTTP”);
function sendAReq(sendStr)
// a generic function to send away any data to the server
// specifically ‘logtimefile.php’ in this case
{
oRequest.open(“POST”, “logtimefile.php”, true); //this is where the stuff is going
oRequest.setRequestHeader(“Content-Type”, “application/x-www-form-urlencoded”);
oRequest.send(sendStr);
}
function calcTime()
{
var tend = new Date();
var totTime = (tend.getTime() – tstart.getTime())/1000;
msg = “[URL:" location.href "] Time Spent: ” totTime ” seconds”;
sendAReq(‘tmsg=’ msg);
}
</script>
</head>
<body onbeforeunload=”javascript:calcTime();”>
Hi, navigate away from this page or Refresh this page to find the time you spent seeing
this page in a log file in the server.
</body>
</html>
2) Another fellow proposes creating a timer in Page_Load. Write the initial database record at that point. Then, on the timer's Elapsed event, do an update of that record. Do a final update in onbeforeunload. Then, if for some reason you miss the very last onbeforeunload event, at least you will have recorded most of the time the user spent on the page (depending upon the timer Interval). Of course, this solution will be relatively resource-intensive if you update every second and have hundreds or thousands of concurrent users. So, you could make it configurable that this feature be turned on and off for the application.
147
This has to be done with some javascript. As the other said, it is not completely reliable. But you should be able to get more than enough accurate data.
This will need to call your server from javascript code when the page is unloaded. The javascript event to hook is window.unload. Or you can use a nicer API, like jQuery. Or you could use a ready made solution, like WebTrends, or Google Analytics. I think that both record the length of time that the page was displayed.
Good web analytics is pretty hard. And it becomes harder if you have to manage a lot of traffic. You should try to find an existing solution and not reinvent your own ...
44
I've put some work into a small JavaScript library that times how long a user is on a web page. It has the added benefit of more accurately (not perfectly, though) tracking how long a user is actually interacting with the page. It ignores time that a user switches to different tabs, goes idle, minimizes the browser, etc. The Google Analytics method suggested has the shortcoming (as I understand it) that it only checks when a new request is handled by your domain. It compares the previous request time against the new request time, and calls that the 'time spent on your web page'. It doesn't actually know if someone is viewing your page, has minimized the browser, has switched tabs to 3 different web pages since last loading your page, etc.
As multiple others have mentioned, no solution is perfect. But hopefully this one provides value, too.
Edit: I have updated the example to include the current API usage.
http://timemejs.com
An example of its usage:
Include in your page:
<script src="http://timemejs.com/timeme.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
TimeMe.initialize({
currentPageName: "home-page", // page name
idleTimeoutInSeconds: 15 // time before user considered idle
});
</script>
If you want to report the times yourself to your backend:
xmlhttp=new XMLHttpRequest();
xmlhttp.open("POST","ENTER_URL_HERE",true);
xmlhttp.setRequestHeader("Content-type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
var timeSpentOnPage = TimeMe.getTimeOnCurrentPageInSeconds();
xmlhttp.send(timeSpentOnPage);
TimeMe.js also supports sending timing data via websockets, so you don't have to try to force a full http request into the document.onbeforeunload event.
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