Time Log – time spent on other students’ sites (must have 4 entries or more):
Date: Feb. 11, 06min From: 13:21pm To: 13:28pm
Date: Feb. 11, 07min From: 14:55pm To: 15:02pm
Date: Feb. 12, 04min From: 16:05pm To: 16:09pm
Date: Feb. 12, 11min From: 19:15pm To: 19:26pm
Date: Feb. 13, 06min From: 20:05pm To: 20:11pm
Date: Feb. 13, 07min From: 21:14pm To: 21:21pm
Essay I. Summary of my activities and new contents (with clickable links)
This week, I tried to keep my CMS feeling like an actual website someone would enjoy clicking around, not just a place where I dump homework. I published two new posts (each with an image and proper credit), and I left comments turned on so people can react and leave thoughts instead of just reading and bouncing. I also cleaned up my categories and tags so posts are easier to find, then tightened up my menu and added another category, “Interests,” where you can learn a bit more about things that interest me and movies I like through a review post. I also added the HW6 link to the HWS section, so my professor can locate everything quickly. You can enjoy the new content I made under the Interests category. The two new posts I added are: The Lincoln Lawyer Season 4: A Review and Why I Care About Digital Growth in Africa.
Essay II. Summary of my GA4 Exploration (add screenshot)
In GA4, I spent some time in Explorations looking at what actually happened on my site over the past week (not just the high-level reports). Using a Path exploration, I noticed a common flow where visitors started on my homepage (61%) and then clicked into My Life next, which was honestly helpful because it shows what’s catching attention first. From there, the path view made it easy to trace what people did next, whether they continued browsing through my General Menu or landed directly on posts from other entry points. I also saw that my traffic sources are pretty balanced right now: Direct was about 5, and Referrals were 6, so people are reaching the site in more than one way. Overall, the exploration made my menu feel less like “something I arranged for class” and more like a real user experience. I can actually see what people click first, where they keep going, and where they drop off. I’m also happy that my site seems to be retaining visitors, with an average engagement time of 5:17, meaning my content is interesting, but I need to do more for it to be more engaging. Some screenshots from my explorations.
Essay III. What I’m seeing now that I didn’t notice before
What I’m starting to realize (and I honestly didn’t think about before) is that GA4 doesn’t treat “traffic” as just visits; it’s really tracking the behavior inside those visits. So even when the number of users isn’t huge, the event count still climbs fast because GA4 is logging things like engagement, scrolling around, and multiple actions within the same session, not just page loads. I’m also seeing how much my menu setup actually matters: if a link is obvious in the General Menu, people find it and click it, but if it’s tucked away, it basically doesn’t exist to most visitors. That’s been a useful wake-up call, because it shifts my mindset from “I published a post” to “Did people actually get to it the way I meant them to?”
Reference (APA):
Google. (n.d.). GA4 explorations. Google Analytics Help. https://support.google.com/analytics/topic/12156609
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