Web Analytics Dashboard with R & Shiny

Marco Pasin
18/12/2014

Application link:
http://mcpasin.shinyapps.io/WebAnalytics-Dashboard

Benefits of Dashboards in Web Analytics

  • Display the current status of key web metrics
  • Allow benchmark & segmentation
  • All data in a single comprehensive view
  • Web Performance can be monitored at a glance
  • Quick insights

Advantages of Using R & Shiny to Create Dashboards

  • Advanced statistical modeling offered by R
  • Beautiful & Interactive charts (e.g. googleVis package)
  • Ability to work with very big datasets
  • Integrate information from different data sources
  • Connect directly to API (e.g. RGoogleAnalytics package)
  • Quick & easy app development with Shiny
  • Share on the web
  • It's open source and free!

Simple Scenario: Segment by Device

  • Radio buttons to spot differences in performance for desktop, mobile y tablets
  • Interactive charts via Google Charts (googleVis package)
  • All charts update depending on device selected
  • Can potentially include sophisticated visualizations not offered by Web Analytics tools
  • Dashboard can integrate with API (e.g Google Analyitics) to refresh data daily

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Setting up the Dashboard

To set up the dashboard, first create each chart object and then merge them in pairs as follows:

D1 <- gvisLineChart(dataDevice, "date", c("sessions","signup"))
D2 <- gvisBubbleChart(channelsDevice, idvar="channel", xvar="sessions", yvar="pages.sessions")
D3 <- gvisLineChart(dataDevice, xvar="date", yvar="bounce.rate",
D4 <- gvisGeoChart(countriesDevice, "country", "new.users")
D12 <- gvisMerge(D1,D2, horizontal=TRUE)
D34 <- gvisMerge(D3,D4, horizontal=TRUE)
D12D34<- gvisMerge(D12,D34, horizontal=FALSE)
plot(D1234)