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Mining for data: using web analytics information, institutions can get to know their website visitors betterand make decisions that enhance the user experience and the school's web presence

University Business, Nov, 2005 by Kirk Snedeker

Before building a campaign, Magnes works closely with her internal "clients" to determine their expectations: "Are they looking for lead generations, such as people filling out forms that require specific information? Or, perhaps they are looking to drive traffic to a specific site or department," she explains. Knowing their needs ahead of time enables her to establish key performance measurements before launch.

"Tracking response rates from a specific campaign involves measuring pre- and post-campaign stats not only on the landing pages, but overall," she adds. In other words, Magnes measures activity on the entire site, not just the promoted areas. This gives her a clearer measure of the campaign's success.

Related Results

Garland at Roanoke tracks a number of statistics, including e-mail opens, clicks on links for both alumni and admissions, ad leads and clicks on landing pages, traffic from interactive ads, and completions of forms coming from outside advertising. If a particular effort is not performing well, he can take steps to correct the problem.

Bernstein employs similar techniques for the University at Buffalo. Discovering that the CTR (click-thru rate) on a link wasn't as high as expected, Bernstein decided to change the wording. The result? A significant increase in CTR on the link. The link? To the university's giving site. Are you sure you're not losing donations due to similar problems?

GETTING THE JOB DONE

"With whose time and with what budget?" It's a question that commonly comes after an idea like using web analytics is voiced.

As Paquet explains, the perception is that this new undertaking will absorb additional time and resources that simply don't exist. He posits that it will be "nearly impossible" to convince people to devote time to analytics.

However, it doesn't have to be an expensive or time-intensive undertaking. Getting started with some simple initiatives can have a great impact with little effort.

Besides, asserts Bernstein, "no matter how small your resources are, they should be deployed in a strategic manner." And it's time well invested.

So you might scrap plans to overhaul the officially mandated "Student and Faculty Frog Toss of Togetherness" website and instead put efforts into optimizing the alumni page. If your current web server has a basic stats package already, start there. You'll quickly start learning which questions to ask to get the job done.

GLOSSARY OF WEB ANALYTICS TERMS

Abandonment: Where a user leaves a site

Click thru: Clicking on a Link

Click-thru Rate: Percentage of clicks per page views

Page view: How many times the entire page is downloaded

Referral: The site from which a user came

Resources

Deep Metrix, www.deepmetrix.com

Elliance, www.elliance.com

Mint, www.haveamint.com

Omniture, www.omniture.com

Urchin, www.urchin.com