Read the latest NHS Choices performance report and find out how many people visit the site each month and what areas are most popular.
NHS Choices uses Webtrends (a web analytics tool), Hitwise (an online competitive intelligence service) and other analytic providers to compile the data for its monthly performance reports.
Download the latest report:
- Site performance September 2011, (PDF, 340 kb)
- Site performance August 2011, (PDF 305 kb)
- Site performance July 2011, (PDF, 414 kb)
- Site performance June 2011, (PDF, 379 kb)
- Site performance May 2011, (PPT, 483 kb)
- Site performance April 2011, (PPT, 453 kb)
- Site performance March 2011, (PDF, 1.19 mb)
- Site performance February 2011, (PDF, 1.18 mb)
- Site performance January 2011, (PDF, 1.18 mb)
Service Usage
Information provided in the section derives from Webtrends and Hitwise.
Visits
This graph shows the number of visits www.nhs.uk receives in any given month. A visit is a series of actions that begins when a visitor views the first page from the server, and ends when the visitor leaves the site or remains idle beyond the idle-time limit. The default idle-time limit is thirty minutes.
Site usage
This is an overview of the current and previous month’s key visits and visitor-related statistics, detailing the following:
Total visits
Total visits is the visits graph represented as a single figure for the current specified month.
Total visitors
A visitor refers to an individual that visits a website. A visitor can have multiple visits, and each time they visit the site they contribute to the total visitors figure for the current specified month.
Average pages per visit
Average pages per visit is a figure provided by Webtrends that represents the average number of pages a visitor looks at in any given visit.
Average visit duration
Average visit duration is also provided by Webtrends and represents the average length of time a visitor spends on the NHS Choices site during any given visit.
Visits by area
Visits by area represents the number of visits to each main area of the site as a percentage of visits to the site as a whole. The ‘All other content’ figure includes visits to areas of the site such as behind the headlines, medical advice now, scorecards, self-help guides, Change for Life, blogs, videos, tools, alerts and other areas.
Top referrers
The top referrers chart shows how visitors to NHS Choices reach the site. It shows what proportion of traffic arrives directly (people accessing the site by typing www.nhs.uk/ URLs into their browser), what proportion arrives through the NHS Direct website and what proportion arrives through the Google search engine.
Top ten search terms
This is a list of the top 10 terms that are typed by users into search engines and result in visits to NHS Choices. This information is provided by Hitwise, an online service that provides statistics on how UK internet users interact with websites.
Hitwise market share – government
This graph shows the number of visits NHS Choices receives each month as a percentage of the total number of visits to all government websites. It charts similar figures for other leading central government sites.
Hitwise market share – health sector
This graph shows the number of visits NHS Choices receives each month as a percentage of the total number of visits to all health information websites. It charts similar figures for other leading health information websites.
Engagement with the site
Hospital and GP comments
This shows the number of hospital and GP comments made by members of the public each month since the feature has been available on the site. The blue scale on the right shows the cumulative total of comments.
GP practices managing data
This graph shows how many GP practices have a personal profile page on NHS Choices. It also shows how many new GP practices sign up for a personal profile page each month.
Active and new site user accounts
This graph shows how many user accounts have been created by members of the public and are still active. It also shows how many new accounts were created each month.
Live operations
Site availability
This shows the amount of time in a specified month that the site was available with no technical issues (eg server problems) as a percentage.
P1 and P2 queries raised
P1 and P2 queries are technical problems reported to the helpdesk (both internally and externally). P1 queries are higher priority (priority level 1) than P2 queries (priority level 2). This graph represents the number of queries raised as P1 and P2 each month.
Distribution
This graph represents the total number of implemented partners and the number of queries received since syndication began in July 2008. Implemented partners are external websites that currently use NHS Choices content on their site. Queries from partners refers to the number of times this information is requested by visitors to the partner sites.
