New: Find out the date of each member last visit

[Evan]

We've heard a lot of requests for Network Creators to have more visibility into what their members are doing on your Ning Network. We've launched the Leaderboards feature and the new Dashboard to try to provide just this type of insight. 

However, there was a simple piece missing — knowing when the last time was that each member visited your Ning Network. We're happy to announce that ends today! 

Shortly, you'll be able to see a new column in your members spreadsheet that records the most recent activity (for instructions on how to export your list of members to a spreadsheet, read this document). Next to each member's name, you'll see the last date that they visited your Ning Network. This data is updated only once every 24 hours, so it could take up to a day to show a recently visited member's new date.

This isn't retroactive, so dates will only be displayed for members who visit from this point forward. The remainder will be blank. However, as weeks and months go by, this should provide you great insight into who's visiting, especially those members that are visiting without participating. It should also give you a new way to target inactive members and encourage them to come back.

We're exploring adding this date to profile pages as well, and we'd love your feedback on that.

[Ryan the CEO of CEO's]

When is the recurring events coming? I need to see that like yesterday- and the linkedin share button! thank you!

[Michelle]

Hi - this is a great start. It would be easier for us, in addition to having this raw data, to see an internal report that Ning produces as well that answers how many members visited this month (e.g., 2000 of 30,000 of total members).

 

On a related note, we'd really like a way to tally total contributions on the site, which we've been trying to do manually. It would be awesome to have these numbers on a private dashboard as well and allow us to specify the date range (so we can tally on a monthly, quarterly, biannual or annual basis):

New members: #

Group joins: #

Group comments or discussions: #

Forum discussions: #

Blogs: #

Photos: #

Videos: #

Friendship acceptances: #

Profile Wall comments: #

Private messages: #

 

I think that is everything for me, though others would probably want to know things like "Events." It would help us immensely know what areas are most active and when.

[Kevin Holmes]

I agree with Michelle.  I am trying to nail down engagement before growing my group size.  As the saying goes, what can't be measured can't be managed.  

 

I would love to have a better view of my engagement trends e.g.

How many / which members login each day/week/mo?  

How long do they spend on the site?

Who are my creators/consumers?  

Trends over time, etc...

 

Also helpful would be segmentation tools for re-engaging inactive users, say with an email broadcast that points to some piece of popular content or a simple survey that asks where they've been or a special offer for coming back.

 

I think Ning could add a huge amount of value and improve retention of paying creators and their members if they focused on developing robust community management analytics for us vs. a piecemeal or singular data point like last login.  Think Salesforce.com reporting.   Could be huge guys.

 

[Eric Suesz]

Hey, Kevin. We've begun adding stats to the CSV, which this discussion is focused on. We'll be adding more and hopefully moving them into the regular interface over time. Segmenting in the way you indicate would be very helpful. Agreed. We'll see what we can do. 

I use Google Analytics to view some of these types of statistics. I highly recommend trying it out if you haven't already. 

[Les Squires]

How many times has a page been read?  

 

[Sean Blackwell]

Thanks! You guys are doing a great job - well worth the money!

[Mike Aarom]

This is not myspace, so hopefully the "last date on their profile page" option will be something the NC's and/or members can choose to make active or not.

 

Please give us the option to disable that feature if it goes live.

 

Thanks in advance

[Eric Suesz]

Yeah, Mike. I think that this is a contentious issue that would probably require some options.

[Atheist Universe]

That is very very cool!

[Alejandra Casanova]

Nice

 

[Ryan the CEO of CEO's]

I would love to see to see the last time a person logged in- if they are logging in but not participating... I will not be tempted to delete them:) as I know they maybe comsuming the content- which to me is fine!  BTW, when are we getting the recurring events?

[Ava Warner]

My network is not very active online since the majority of our contact is through conferencing; however, it has been about a week since this tool was implemented and only 50% of the people that logged in since then showed in the Last Visit column. Is this happening to others or am I the only one?