I agree with you about the challenge of coming up with goals to a point. For larger universities with different sub-domains for different units (ie, university.edu vs. admissions.university.edu vs. it.university.edu, etc.) I think it’s easier because you can treat them as different sites. Your goals should reflect your business goals. What does admissions want to do with their website? Likewise, what does central IT want to do with their website? Those goals will be vastly different.

Similarly, you can do this with a smaller university or college as well. Hopefully you use good directory structure on your website so you can segment those parts of the website easily. Then you can just do the same thing. Even though it’s one website, it will have many different goals depending upon the area of the website in question.

Then you can create dashboard specific to those units with metrics that directly measure each unit goals.

I agree that it might be difficult to tie-in certain university goals, however, each unit that has a website should have their own *business* goals.

With goals generally it’s my experience that it’s often hard to pin down what the goals of the university are, which makes translating these into website goals difficult.

1. On an ad hoc basis to see if a marketing campaign is doing well – and with this I would argue that most are really only paying attention to click-throughs
2. To report out very high level metrics such as visits, pages views, time-on-site/page, etc.

I should really conduct a survey as you did as these are definitely generalities, but it does seem to be a common theme in my conversations.

In doing both of the above, (again this is a generality), I would argue that most do them without any thought as to how these metrics play into the overall goal of the website, or, if these metrics should even be looked at because they have nothing to do with the overall goal of the website. My favorite example of this is geo-segmentation. The map is very cool to look at and many people want to know where their users are coming from, but they have no idea what to do with the data (and most of the time it doesn’t mean anything to the overall goal).

As far as privacy goes, I find that there are different levels of concern depending upon the department. Everyone knows that it’s against Google’s policy to gather personally identifiable information, however I know some people have concerns that a site *could* collect that data and also that the data is being stored at a third-party. This is why website privacy policies are so important and that is something that, sadly, we are way behind in updating.

Google Analytics tends to be the analytics tool of choice, but one of the issues to preventing institutional support are concerns about data privacy – I wonder if the reaction is the same elsewhere?

In my own quest to get Analytics implemented at our University I’ve focused on using it as a tool for web editors to identify their top pages. By also setting up applications and pdf downloads as specific goals, we’ve gained powerful data on the value of our website.

@Carmella – A great list. I would also add to try to monetize wherever possible. If you can show that the website is *losing* potentially X dollars because of any number of things (let’s say the registration process is terrible), that has a great impact as well. Assigning a dollar value to actions people take on the website helps prioritize areas in need of help.

@Brian – Thanks. I think there are a couple of things you can do.

Before doing anything, I would read Avinash Kaushik’s first book, Web Analytics an Hour a Day. That book lays out the basics of web analytics and is very easy for anyone to understand. Avinash just came out with another book, Web Analytics 2.0. I actually ordered that yesterday and can’t wait to read it.

If you use Google Analytics, a must read book is Brian Clifton’s, Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics. Brian’s blog, Measuring Success with Google Analytics, is actually a supplement to the book and gives updates, hacks, tips, etc. Both are invaluable resources if you use Google Analytics.

So, first and foremost, read and learn. This can obviously be done after work, at night, whenever.

When you say, “what key areas can one review without taking up much time,” I’m not quite sure what you mean by that, but I’ll assume you mean what types of reports can one review without taking up much time.

There are some basic reports that will give you good insights (landing page bounce rate, keyword referrals, internal site search terms), but it really depends on your site goals. Without website goals, you can stare at your analytics for hours and get nothing actionable out of them because you’re not sure where to look. If the data you’re looking at doesn’t relate to your site goals, then you’re just wasting time. It’s essential to focus on what is relevant to your specific business and your specific site and forget the rest. Obviously there are adhoc reports you’ll run in certain situations, but you get my point.

As I mentioned to Carmella, it’s always powerful (will get people to listen to you and start to give analytics priority!) when you can monetize actions on your website.

I hope that helps and please let me know if I didn’t answer your question.

Though web analytics can’t be ignored, the real question is for companies just getting their feet wet and/or believe that they simply don’t have the resources needed to take this seriously … what key areas can one review without taking up much time?

http://marketingtech.typepad.com/marketing-tech/2009/10/how-to-manage-your-web-analytics-in-one-hour-a-month.html

Here are my Top Five Reasons why everyone in Higher Ed should be using Web Analytics…

1. Use it to demonstrate success through annual increases in web traffic to build the business case for a bigger budget/staff for e-marketing projects. Sorry, but an outstretched hand alone won’t cut it. HE administrators want hard facts and numbers. People are always asking me how we’re able to garner budget and resource support. This is how…

2. Use analytics to monitor search terms to see what niche segments emerge. Using visitor behavior stats will illuminate previously hidden segments that your competitors may a) not know about and b) not market to … giving you a potential audience to mine.

3. Use analytics to increase the speed with which prospects convert from inquiry to applicant. Wayfinding on a website can be viewed as clickpaths. If your prospects meander to your key destination pages (Inquiry or Application), then it takes them longer to convert. Feed their needs by observing their behavior and adjusting content to accelerate the turnaround. When we did this, our application season began to peak about 30-45 days earlier, giving admission folks more applicants overall … and more time to consider applications.

4. Web analytics completes the picture on all enrollment management reports (and alumni and fundraising). Being able to reconcile the source of lead and it’s behavior through the lifecycle helps to document and prove the investment in an institution’s web site.

5. Your future as a Higher Ed marketer depends on it. The new economic reality is that not everyone will get a big bite at the budget apple. And, those that do will need to document, document, document the value of their investment in the university marketing foodchain.

For those of you who are curious, we currently use analytics on all our university web sites, including:

http://www.stedwards.edu
http://www.gotostedwards.com (undergraduate recruiting)
http://www.discoverstedwards.com (adult bachelor’s degree recruiting)
http://www.excelatstedwards.com (grad degree recruiting)

Bottom line, I would encourage everyone in Higher Ed to make the time for web analytics. It’s ok to start small and work your way up. As Nike would say, “Just do it!”