Visitors to the Livewell Southend website
8.2 New and returning visitors
Between 1 August 2021 to 20 December 2022, there were a total of 127,879 visitors to the Livewell website. Of these, 22,859 visitors were returning visitors. The implication of this is that there were 105,020 new visitors to the Livewell website.
8.3 User demographics
It should be noted that the figures quoted in this section do not relate to all users of the site, but only those who have agreed for Google to share their data.
24.22% of total users (30,972) shared information about their gender. From this we can see that most visitors to Livewell Southend were female (17,995 - 58.1%), and 12, 977 visitors (41.9%) were male.
23.82% of total users shared information about their age. The predominant age bracket was 25 to 34 (7,960 users - 26.13%), closely followed by those aged 35 to 44 (7,170 - 23.15%). 4,368 users were aged 18-24 years (14.34%).
From the total number of visitors, most appeared to be based in London with Southend-on-Sea following closely behind. We would expect most visitors to the site to be based in Southend rather than London. A possible explanation for this is that some visitors are not using exact location services and by default have their Google location set as London. Location figures are as follows:
- London - 44,308 (32.10%)
- Southend - 38,722 (28.06%)
- Chelmsford - 2,488 (1.80%)
- Rayleigh - 1,966 (1.42%)
- Other areas - 36.62%
8.4 Device information
From the 127, 789 total users, 81,163 people (63.47% of users) accessed the site from a mobile device. 43,157 people (33.75%) accessed the site from a desktop and 3,751 people (2.93%) accessed the site from a tablet.
8.5 Traffic sources
This section shows how users have arrived at the site in ranked order.
Organic search (84,021 users) - where people have arrived at the Livewell site by putting key words such as `Livewell Southend` and `Lighthouse` into a browser. Google was the most frequently used search engine followed by Bing.
Direct (26,272 users) - this includes people typing or pasting the web address into their browser or clicking a bookmark or following a link in offline documents such as PDFs. If Google Analytics cannot track the source of your traffic, it will also categorise this as direct traffic.
Referral (18,808 users) - this includes when people have arrived at the site by following a link from an external website. The top scoring source is not identifiable from the data, but we can see evidence of people arriving at the site from retailers.evouchers.com, this includes Holiday Activities and Food programme (HAF) vouchers; southend.gov.uk; livewellsouthend.com; gov.uk; One Southend; and A Better Start Southend which directs people to the SEND Local Offer landing page and the childcare, and social care pages on Livewell.
Social (2,885 users) - this includes where people have arrived at the site via links on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Instagram stories.
Emails (35 users) - where people have arrived at the site by following links included in emails. This includes being taken to the SEND Local Offer landing page, and also to the SEND Strategy page as a result of the strategy consultation.
8.6 Page visits
The following graphs show page views and unique page views for the main entry points and landing pages on the SEND Local Offer between 1 August 2021 and 20 December 2022. Page views are the total number of pages viewed in which repeated views of a single page are counted. Unique page views are concerned with individual visitors only. Each visitor is only counted once and therefore, this number tends to be lesser than total page views.
The most visited page was the SEND Local Offer Landing page with 48,804, page views and 27,760 unique page views. This was followed by the I am a parent or carer page. The 3rd most visited page was the events and activities landing page. Because we know that visitors are interested in events and activities, we regularly include items in the SEND newsletter about things to do, with links through to information on the Local Offer highlighting forthcoming events. We also regularly share information about events and activities on our social media channels.
The `I am a practitioner` and the `I am a young person` pages are among those less frequently visited, particularly when compared to the `I am a parent carer` page. This indicates that there is more work to do on raising awareness and encouraging use of the Local Offer among young people with SEND and practitioners.
Graphs showing monthly page views and unique page views for the pages mentioned and other main pages of the SEND Local Offer are not published here for accessibility reasons, but are available from the Local Offer team at localoffer@southend.gov.uk
8.7 Top 20 pages
The top 20 most frequently visited pages on the Livewell Southend website between 31 August 2021 to 20 December 2022 were identified. 4 of these were pages from the SEND Local Offer section of the site. These are:
- the SEND Local Offer landing page
- The Lighthouse Child Development Centre
- I am a parent or carer page
- mental health
In relation to page views of the main Livewell Southend landing page, the Local Offer section has had a good number of views.
Even though the majority of the top 20 visited pages on Livewell Southend are not SEND Local Offer pages, we have used this knowledge of what people are commonly looking for to signpost to information from the SEND Local Offer pages as follows:
- Linking to information about the Holiday Activities and Food Programme and the `what's on` calendar from the SEND Local Offer events and activities section.
- Linking to a newly produced Cost of Living support guide from the money, housing and legal section of the SEND Local Offer.
- Linking to the Southend Family Centres page from the events and activities, early years and education and health and wellbeing pages on the SEND Local Offer. We have also added a directory record for SEND Stay and Play sessions which are running from a local Family Centre.
- Linking to the childcare and early education page from the early years and education landing page of the SEND Local Offer.
- Because the Early Help Service is something that parents commonly look for on the directory, and a service that members of the SEND Team and SENDiass regularly refer parent carers to, we have worked with the Early Help Support Team to make their service information clearer. This was also done in response to feedback from parent careers and SEND Team colleagues that the information wasn't very clear initially.
- Posting Lighthouse Child Development Centre updates on the Local Offer. We also created information about the Lighthouse Parent Carer and Young Person Network and share details of forthcoming network meetings on social media and on the Local Offer.