Table of Contents
With Share Analytics, you can get a quick & easy overview of how your shared documents perform in your whole Space or per your documents.
Share Analytics is available for every customer and Advanced Share Analytics is available with the Business Plan, you can check out our Plan comparison here.
Share Analytics
You can check Share Analytics in two different places in the app:
Shared Content folder (Mac, iPad, iPhone)
If you open the Shared content folder, you will see a simple diagram where you can check how many times your shared content was checked, how many different views it generated (if you have multiple subpages in a shared document every subpage open will count as a separate view), and in average how long the visitors stayed on your shared document.
Below the diagram, you can check the number of visits for every shared document quickly.
Get a quick overview of all your shared documents under the Shared Content folder
Document / Page level analytics under Shared button (Mac, iPad, iPhone, 🌐 Web app)
The other option is to see per document how many times your share link was viewed to open a document and click on the share button - at the bottom, you will see the number.
Check out for every shared link how many times it was viewed in the past 30 days
It’s important to emphasize that we built this feature with privacy in mind - share analytics is simply counting the occurrence when the shared page is loaded - we don’t know who is loading the share page and not storing any personally identifiable information about the visitor.
If you want to learn more about the exact technical details of how to share analytics are working check out the FAQ section down below.
Advanced Share Analytics
ℹ️ Advanced Share Analytics available in the Business Plan.
If you are using Craft for a business use case - for example, as a Freelancer, in a Team, or as a Content creator, understanding your audience better could provide crucial information to improve your work and your documents.
Because of this, if you have a Business Plan, you unlock the advanced share analytics capabilities where you can drill down more and get a more detailed overview of your shared pages.
Detailed views
Just click on one of the bars of the diagram or open the detailed view for a specific document, either opening the doc itself or using the View Analytics option from the shared content list below the diagram.
Once the detailed view opens, you will see a similar breakdown:
Detailed view contains four additional widgets - Top Countries, Top Pages, Top Devices, Top Sources
- Top Countries - List of countries where your readers are coming from.
- Top Pages - List of the (sub)pages of your document.
- Top Devices - Desktop / Mobile / Tablet / Other.
- Top Sources - Shows which referral sources are driving traffic to your document.
Filters
Every list item is a potential filter as well. For example, simply click on a day in the bar chart and you will see that specific day, or create a complex filter for every US desktop user who checked a specific page in your shared document.
Country + Device + Page filter
Detailed lists
If you are interested in a detailed breakdown of any of the categories, just click on the ‘View all’, and you will see the full list.
The shared document is most popular in Japan - time to localize your content? 🇯🇵
FAQ
How to upgrade to Business Plan?
I already have an in-app subscription / License, what to do?
Are Craft analytics free to use?
How does Craft know how many readers viewed the shared documents?
How is average reading time calculated?
I’ve shared a password-protected document with 1 person but I see multiple readers.
How does Craft know if readers are on mobile or desktop?
I don’t see any data even when I know someone has viewed my document
What happens if I stop sharing a document. Will I lose all the data?
I have more questions, how do I contact you?
How to upgrade to Business Plan?
You can create your Business Plan (for your own or for your Team) on our Business Admin Page - https://docs.craft.do/team-admin/new
I already have an in-app subscription / License, what to do?
In both cases, we fully refund the remaining time of the subscription / License so you won’t lose that part!
- If you have in-app subscription, you need to cancel it as we can’t cancel it for you - https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT202039
- If you have a License, it’s non-renewable, so you don’t need to cancel it
Once you purchased the Business Plan, please ping us at support@craft.do and we will help you in the refund process.
Are Craft analytics free to use?
All Craft customers will see page views for their shared pages.
Customers using the Business plan will have all of the above plus these additional metrics that can be viewed on a per-document basis:
- Page views for all shared documents
- Number of unique readers
- Average reading time
- Countries the readers are from
- Subpage views
- Devices the readers used
- Where the reader found your document (source)
Business plan customers will also be able to filter on any of the above. This is helpful for example when trying to understand whether your readers on mobile behave differently from desktop.
How does Craft know how many readers viewed the shared documents?
Although we say that a shared document has a certain number of readers Craft share pages do not actually track people. Instead, we count how many different devices have asked to view the document. In most cases this measurement is quite accurate, however, it’s not perfect and a single person who views your document on their laptop, phone or tablet will appear as 3 “readers”.
Is this GDPR compliant?
Yes. Unlike other websites and apps Craft does not set cookies, or collect any personally identifiable information and Craft cannot follow your readers around the internet. When other apps place cookies on your device they are tracking what your device does, possibly even on other websites. In contrast Craft measures what Craft pages do, not what your device does.
By not using cookies Craft does not need to obtain consent from your readers to store and retrieve data from their devices. It’s one less thing to worry about and annoy your readers with.
How is average reading time calculated?
Craft shared pages record the time they were requested and then send updates every minute thereafter, as long as the browser tab is active. If the reader leaves the page in any way (switches apps, switches tabs, the device goes to sleep or locked, etc), then reading time is paused and resumes only when the page is brought back to view again. If the reader returns after 30 minutes, we consider it a new visit with reading time starting from zero.
Unlike traditional analytics tools, Craft doesn't consider single-page views to be bounces (which would record a zero reading time and render analytics useless!), but rather measures reading time for them just as well as for visits with multiple page views.
There is a maximum inactive time limit of 30 minutes. If there's no page navigation inside the share page and the browser tab is left open and focused, then after 30 minutes no more data is sent to prevent a device that has been left on creating super long reading times. This means a 30 min cap applies to the reading time of single-page documents (no subpages) as there is no navigation possible.
How do I turn the feature on?
Shared content analytics is enabled for all Craft customers. To view the data you’ll need to navigate to your shared content folder and ensure that you're sharing at least one document with people who are likely to read it.
What data is collected?
Craft collects the following data
- Url of the requested page (from our servers)
- Device operating system
- Browser
- Location - country level (based on IP address)
- HTTP referrer
Craft does not share, sell or send your data to any advertising companies or any other third-parties in general.
I’ve shared a password-protected document with 1 person but I see multiple readers.
Craft share pages do not track people across their devices. All the data is isolated to a single device only. There is no way to know whether the same person visits a site from more than one device. This means a single person who views your document on their laptop, phone, or tablet will appear as 3 “readers”.
How does Craft know if readers are on mobile or desktop?
When a device requests a web page it sends over a set of information called a User Agent containing details about the device, browser, and carrier. Most of the time this information allows us to determine if the device is say a smartphone. However, it’s not always that easy. Safari on iPad can look very much like a desktop whereas Chrome on an iPad looks like a tablet. Additionally, some devices are so new, or old, or rare and we don't know. This is why you'll see other as a device type.
How quickly does data arrive?
In most cases, data arrives in under 5 minutes but in some cases, it may take up to 30 minutes for data to flow through our systems.
I don’t see any data even when I know someone has viewed my document
Data can take up to 30 minutes to appear in some cases so please be patient if you do not see some expected activity immediately.
Some ad blockers may block the analytics data from being sent.
Craft also filters out known and suspected bots. This is not a perfect science and so in rare cases, we may mistakenly filter out a real reader. Don’t worry though, if they have permission to access your document they will still be able to view it, they just won’t be counted in the data.
What happens if I stop sharing a document. Will I lose all the data?
Any analytics data collected while a document is shared will remain if you stop sharing the document. The data will also still remain in the summary graph in the shared content folder.
If the document is later reshared its graphs will retain the original data. If you wish to reset the data to zero the best way to do this is to make a new copy of the document with a new share link.
I have more questions, how do I contact you?
Please reach out to us at support@craft.do we'd love to hear from you