The eternal battle: Members vs Guests

Dakis

Dakis

Well-known member
We build communities for people that want to get involved in them, that is our Members.

But, in reality, how much interest does a community draw from non-members? Or should I say "people that are not logged in" , as someone may be visiting the community as a guest, but may still have an account. Although I think with the cookies and all, most people are logged in when accessing a community if they have an account.

So I did an interesting search at my google analytics and this is what I came up with for 2,5 months in 2013:

VISITS:

Members 13 %
Guests 87%

:eek:

PAGES PER VISIT:

Members 14
Guests 4

and therefore:

PAGEVIEWS:

Members 32%
Guests 68%

Thoughts?
 
@Dakis this is a very interesting topic for me, sorry there haven't been any replies.

I personally build for both "members" and "guests". Members help build the community, but generally it's the guests that click ads and pay the bills.

A big question for you: how did you segment members vs. guests in google analytics?
 
In vBulletin there was some sort of plugin I think (or some code manipulation or some VBseo magic) that did that.

In xenForo I don't have that anymore :(

I mean I do get some sort of segmentation but 90% is "unset", look:

upload_2013-12-13_12-34-19.webp


I'm not sure if there is a way in xenForo to do this, if there is it would be great if someone shared it!
 
I am personally a believer in leaving websites open to guests. Nothing pisses me off more when someone links me to a website, only to find out that I can't even view the content without registering first.

The worst is when people are asking for support... I don't want to register on your website.
 
I completely agree with you jaxel. I always have my site available for guests. The issue here is if there is a way to track analytics segmented in guests and members.
 
Dakis said:
I'm not sure if there is a way in xenForo to do this, if there is it would be great if someone shared it!
Click to expand...
Add to the template "google_analytics":
Code: 
_gaq.push(["_setCustomVar", 1, "Registered", "{xen:if $visitor.user_id, 'member', 'guest'}", 1]);

Then in google analytics go to Audience > Custom > User Defined. From there click on the segments bar (its the bar right below the sub-nav which has "customize | email | etc" on it).

Click on "create new segment". Then click on Advanced > Conditions. Here, you can create custom conditions that put visitors into this new segment. Name this segment "Members", and on the custom condition pane, make it look like this:

Code: 
Custom Variable (Key 1) > exactly matches > Registered
AND
Custom Variable (Value 1) > exactly matches > member

members.webp


Then make one similar to this for "Guests".
 
Last edited:
Just a question @Jaxel , for the guests part, which custom variables do we use (do we just use key 2 and value 2), and how do we call their values in both cases?
 
Dakis said:
In vBulletin there was some sort of plugin I think (or some code manipulation or some VBseo magic) that did that.

In xenForo I don't have that anymore :(

I mean I do get some sort of segmentation but 90% is "unset", look:

View attachment 62987

I'm not sure if there is a way in xenForo to do this, if there is it would be great if someone shared it!
Click to expand...
How did you setup GA so it would show you that?

Dakis said:
We build communities for people that want to get involved in them, that is our Members.

But, in reality, how much interest does a community draw from non-members? Or should I say "people that are not logged in" , as someone may be visiting the community as a guest, but may still have an account. Although I think with the cookies and all, most people are logged in when accessing a community if they have an account.

So I did an interesting search at my google analytics and this is what I came up with for 2,5 months in 2013:

VISITS:

Members 13 %
Guests 87%

:eek:

PAGES PER VISIT:

Members 14
Guests 4

and therefore:

PAGEVIEWS:

Members 32%
Guests 68%

Thoughts?
Click to expand...
Less SEO, more social traffic. I have been having almost as many members online as guests when I check.
 
Thanks a lot I'm not very proficient with analytics :)

I'll post results here after a few days we'll see how we go!
 
FaithFirst said:
How did you setup GA so it would show you that?


Less SEO, more social traffic. I have been having almost as many members online as guests when I check.
Click to expand...

I didn't do anything special, it just shows up. I'll see what happens after the changes I made now according to Jaxel's suggestions.

I always have more guests online than members.
 
I put the extra line of code in the analytics template inside the function, like so:

Code: 
<xen:if is="{$xenOptions.googleAnalyticsWebPropertyId}"><script>

    var _gaq = [['_setAccount', '{$xenOptions.googleAnalyticsWebPropertyId}'], ['_trackPageview']];
    !function(d, t)
    {
        var g = d.createElement(t),
            s = d.getElementsByTagName(t)[0];   
        g.async = true;
        g.src = ('https:' == d.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
        s.parentNode.insertBefore(g, s);
        _gaq.push(["_setCustomVar", 1, "Registered", "{xen:if $visitor.user_id, 'member', 'guest'}", 1]);

    }
    (document, 'script');

    </script><xen:comment><!--Adapted from http://mathiasbynens.be/notes/async-analytics-snippet--></xen:comment></xen:if>

I hope this is correct!
 
Wow I'm really glad I bumped this topic!

@Dakis , as a "thank you", if you get it working, could you post a "how to track guests vs. members in GA for Dummies" step by step process? :D
 
Whatever drastically changed the ratio for me was to limit guests to view up to 10 threads before limiting their access and require them to register.
 
Moshe1010 said:
Whatever drastically changed the ratio for me was to limit guests to view up to 10 threads before limiting their access and require them to register.
Click to expand...

Did that scare people away and cause people not to use the site? Did it have a negative affect on usage?
 

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