Every week, one of our superheroes tells you about a new feature of the new version of OnPage.org – that’s OnPage’s Eleven! The third week starts with the improved report view.
The new redesign of the OnPage.org user interface was largely made possible by our customers who diligently provided us with feedback and improvement suggestions. Many thanks for this. The aim was to make working with OnPage.org much easier and more efficient.
In the previous article, Christoph already presented the modular design of the tool. There are however many more improvements that characterize the new OnPage.org. One of them is the redesigned report view in the OnPage.org Zoom module. At first glance, one only notices minimal changes, though there is a lot more to it than meets the eye. A closer look is certainly worthwhile!
Today, I will show you what you can get out of the new report view and how you can use it to quickly identify sources of error.
While analyzing results in the report, it is advisable to monitor the crawler settings in order to understand why some URLs are listed in the evaluation. When switching, it is important to take the least amount of time as possible in order to not lose track of the current evaluation. In short, the switch should not disrupt the workflow.
The project and crawler settings are clearly placed more prominently in the new interface. The advantage is that one can work within a report and at the same time clicking on “Crawler Settings” opens a modal window. The Evaluation of the report is not interrupted, and the analysis can be continued without switching pages.
The redesign of the user interface makes it possible to start a new crawl from any report or set a specific time for the next crawl. To do this, you simply have to click on the re-crawl symbol that is displayed above the report.
The main advantage is that by using modal windows, you no longer have to leave the report, thus saving time and effort.
Figure 1: Settings can be accessed from every report with a single click
In order to facilitate familiarization with the software and to answer all questions about the reports, one often requires assistance especially when reviewing new reports or if one is new to the tool.
You can view the help text of any report at any time by clicking on the "?" at the bottom right of the screen.
Figure 2: The tour shows you all the important features associated with the tool
The help text of our Professor Serpino is always displayed first. This explains different information in the respective report and gives suggestions on how to go on about the optimization. This type of assistance is extremely helpful, particularly to beginners.
Figure 3: Professor’s help text can be viewed at any time
If you click on through the displayed help text, you will be redirected to a detailed tour of the entire report. It looks through the report and gives you a detailed explanation of all report elements. The tour can be aborted at any time and restarted later. See what surprises are in store with all the features you will learn about on the tour – one or two surprises are certainly guaranteed.
In the new interface, no question should go unanswered. Each report element has its own info box that gives you all the relevant information. This can be viewed by clicking on or placing the mouse over the respective element.
Figure 4: Report assistance can be viewed by placing the mouse over the respective element
You often wish to analyze a particular directory after the entire website has been crawled. In this case, it would be desirable to just set the filter once and not have to repeat this process for each report.
The “add filter” button, which is displayed at the top left of the report, can be used to set a filter with one or more criteria. The selection of the filter options is now virtually unlimited: From “Meta Title Duplicate”, “Canonical Tag not set”, to "URL in the Sitemap” – no filter option is missing.
Once a filter is created, it is automatically saved and applied to all subsequently loaded reports.
Figure 5: Create a new filter
There are cases where you need a certain view that gives you more information on the respective documents. An example is if you are looking at the “Meta Title Length” report. Some URLs do not have a meta title. It would therefore be handy to know which of the affected pages are indexable as well as their respective status codes.
You can use the gear icon found at the top right of the table to customize the document view in the reports.
Figure 6: Customize the report
The "standard view" is well-suited for a clear and simple analysis, whereas the “detailed view” is ideal for complex reviews and is very useful for experienced users. You only need to set the view once, and the setting will be saved for all reports.
Figure 7: Customize the document view
For instance, if you want to optimize a certain directory, you are interested in several factors associated with the corresponding URLs: Are all pages indexable, do all pages have a title and a description, or which status codes do they have? It is very difficult to export this information from different reports and then link the information via CSV or Excel.
This task, which is often very time-consuming, can now be accomplished in just a few clicks. In every report, you can now select the information to be displayed and reviewed within the table. To do this, simply specify the columns you want displayed in the table.
For example, if you want to know if all indexable URLs have a title and a description, if their language can be changed, and what status codes they have, you can simply load the “Indexability” report and then click on the gear icon in the table, select “Customize” to add the “Meta title”, “Meta Description”, “Language”, and “Status Code” fields. The selection of the column attributes is as diverse as the filtering options.
This way, you get the desired evaluation at once.
Figure 8: Customizable columns
Focusing on a particular area of a website can often be problematic. One example is a report where status code 246 URLs are displayed with status code 301. In such a case, you, of course, want to know where these URLs are found within the website. Going through all 246 URLs manually in order to search for similarities would be very time-consuming.
In the new interface, you can add overview lists below the graphs. These overview lists outline all the URLs in the various groups. In order to select the overviews, click on the gear icon and select the desired lists from “Additional Overviews”.
For instance, you can add the “Subdomain” and “Directory Name” attributes. This enables you to quickly identify the areas that are relevant for a particular problem. In our example, the most 301 redirects are used in the www.domain.de subdomain in the /blog/ directory.
Figure 9: Customizable overviews
Particularly in error analysis, you often want to forward the affected URLs, e.g., to your IT department for monitoring the pages that take too long to load or to a client to present him/her with the current results of the analysis.
In the new version, it is now possible to download reports as PDF files. At the bottom right of the screen, there is a toolbar with the corresponding PDF download symbol with which you can export the displayed report in PDF format. By clicking on the link icon, you can share the report to third parties via a link. These two new features are available in the Business Package and above.
Figure 10: PDF download or create a link
In addition, the well-known export function is still available for all customers. This can now be accessed by clicking on the gear icon in the table and selecting the “Export” option.
Figure 11: Export data
We hope that this article will help you with all your use cases. With an improved report view, you can now:
If we have left out any important factors or if you have suggestions on how we can further improve your workflow, do not hesitate to contact us. We look forward to your feedback.
The following articles have been published in this series so far:
OnPage.org starts OnPage’s Eleven - Welcome to the V3 Dashboard
OnPage's Eleven No.2 – The various modules and their use
What is indexable? - Report: Check if web content is indexable
OnPage’s Eleven No. 5 – Custom counts and fields
OnPage's Eleven No. 6: Files (static content)
OnPage's Eleven No. 7 – PDF Exports
Happy Analyzing!
Published on 01/27/2016 by Katharina Bscheider.
Who writes here
Until 2016, Katharina was everyone's personal Ryte USP - with her friendly attitude and good spirits, she was the superwoman of the Product Management Team. In this role, she helped to optimize the Ryte modules.
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