UX analytics: How are users navigating the portal?

[fmccaf1]

Description

High prio (from eval plan ratings): How are users navigating the portal?

User story

As a Cartography team member, I want to understand how users are navigating the portal, keeping in mind breadcrumbs, links on the MHV landing page, secondary nav, and any other ways users can move between tools.

Notes

• Use GA4
• The point is to be able to compare use of breadcrumbs vs. secondary nav vs. back button vs. landing page
• Anne CK might be a contact for help

Possible tasks:

• [x] Attend analytics office hours and/or watch past trainings to gain understanding
• [ ] Validate what you create w Jamie Stutt and / or Wes Rowe

Acceptance criteria

• [x] Report(s) is set up to track navigation methods thru portal

[wesrowe]

@fmccaf1 @katbrinkley @jonathanjnelson @sterkenburgsara – I think we could refine this ticket in more detail to focus it on the specific paths we want to measure. And also, how we want to present it. For example, we already figured out secondary nav clicks, but what format would we use to compare those numbers to, say, breadcrumb clicks? Maybe it's starting with just a mural, a really simple flow diagram with numbers next to arrows? The word "Report" in the existing AC makes me think this deliverable is more formal than the first-draft swipe that I would think is the intent.

Mainly I want to spare us from a ticket where the person who picks it up doesn't have a really clear path to bang it out and move on to other pastures.

Happy to discuss more via slack. :-)

[wesrowe]

May be blocked for s38 due to missing GA events for header. (Maybe all of header is missing??)

[fmccaf1]

There are multiple ways to get to answers to these questions. I believe that Robyn looks at SN use overall to (at least partially) understand what percent of users are clicking on the secondary nav during their session. We could continue to use a metric like this one and we could also get more specific I think.

Here are some findings that would be relatively easy to continue to collect as needed:

On the most basic level, secondary nav is getting more clicks than breadcrumbs.

We can see the amount of clicks by setting up an explore report and filtering by link location = MHV secondary nav or event name = breadcrumb. In July, secondary nav events (clicks) totaled 840,889 and breadcrumb events totaled 161,240.

The greatest use of secondary nav happens on the VA.gov portal home page.

Second place goes to /my-health/appointments, and third goes to /my-health/secure-messages/inbox/. On almost all /my-health/ pages, the MHV home link within the secondary nav tends to receive clicks but is usually among the 3 least clicked secondary nav links on that page.

The greatest use of breadcrumbs happens on /my-health/appointments/ and /my-health/appointments by a lot and this is for clicks to the home page (23,921 and 18,286 respectively for month of July).

For other clicks on breadcrumbs to go the home page, the next most frequent clicks are on /my-health/records (6,103) and /my-health/secure-messages/inbox/ (3,712). For clicks on breadcrumbs that do not send the user to the home page, the next most clicked breadcrumbs leads users to /my-health/appointments and almost all those clicks are happening on pages that are deeper within /appointments such as /my-health/appointments/schedule/type-of-care and /my-health/appointments/pending and /my-health/appointments/schedule/location.

The third most clicked breadcrumbs send users to VA.gov home but this doesn't represent that many clicks in comparison. Leading pages where these clicks happen: /my-health/appointments (5,467) and /my-health/appointments (4,794).

We can then dig further to compare clicks on specific pages and understand, from this specific page (or pages), do users tend to click breadcrumbs or secondary nav more?

I'm planning to attend analytics office hours today in the hopes of learning how to isolate behaviors for sessions in which users "view" more than one tool. I want to then understand how those users move between those tools.

[fmccaf1]

/My-health/appointments and /my-health/appointments/ are the only top 1 or 2 level tool pages on which users tend to prefer breadcrumbs as their method to get to MHV home (on VA.gov).

On other tool pages including secure-message/inbox/, records, medications/refill, medications/, appointments/schedule/type-of-care, medications/about, and secure-messages, users use the secondary nav link more than they use the breadcrumbs link to get to the landing page

One can repeat my report by filtering:

• event name matches regex: breadcrumb|navigation
• page path and screen class begins with /my-health
• link text = My HealtheVet

[sterkenburgsara]

WOW! Very cool. Great job, @fmccaf1

[fmccaf1]

Also wrote these docs to help with GA4 onboarding:

• Tips for isolating events on the landing page (or explained differently, the secret "codes" to tell GA4 the types of clicks we want to know about in any report)
• Step-by-step report building for our eval questions

Both of the above are still in process

[fmccaf1]

Based on numbers I exported to this excel sheet, a few findings on clicks on the landing page. Note: I removed all records-related clicks from the data to get a clearer comparison.

Dates: July 1-31, 2024

• The number of clicks on links in cards is much higher than clicks on Secondary Nav. When comparing totals of link clicks in cards (except records) and total clicks on secondary nav (except records), Secondary Nav makes up 16% of clicks. Appointments card receives the most clicks, at 27%, then Messages at 26%, Medications at 21%. Payments and Medical supplies cards received 6% and 4% respectively.
• Looking at the sessions that included MHV landing page from July, about 70% of users were on desktop while about 30% were using mobile devices. Clicks on Secondary Nav for the month of July were about 62% desktop users' clicks and 38% mobile, indicating that mobile users are making use of the Secondary Nav at a greater rate than desktop users. Meanwhile, desktop users' clicks made up 77% of the clicks on the Payments card, 78% of the clicks on the Medications card, 79% of the clicks on the Messages card, indicating that desktop users click on these links at a greater rate than mobile users.