Trending Upward

A couple months ago Karine Joly launched the analytics revolution in higher ed by asking everyone to fill out a survey about the state of web analytics in higher education. She received 399 submissions.

The executive summary is out and available at the HigherEdAnalytics website. Taking a look at it, a few initial thoughts came to mind. I’m just going to run through them here in no particular order.

First, I was ecstatic that 95% of respondents track website traffic (I know it’s not 100% but in the words of Bill Murray – baby steps). What struck me, though, was that a full 35% did not track any conversions and of the 65% that do, a minority track clickstream and conversion from marketing campaigns (email, online advertising, print, etc.). Now, this may just mean that they aren’t in the marketing department. I’d love to see that data segmented by department. I’m hoping that the majority of folks in the marketing department do indeed track those stats. What’s more – even those folks *outside* the marketing department should be tracking if they do any kind of external communication via emails, social media, etc.

The report also states that 15% of respondents said they do nothing with the data. That makes me sad. : (

The most interesting part of the report for me was around tracking conversions. The  “would like to track” column being the most intriguing. To me, this shows that we *want* to measure conversions, we just can’t for one reason or another. In other words, we need help. The more I wondered about it the more I wondered about the reasons why we don’t (or can’t) track conversions … maybe:

1. The conversion doesn’t happen on our website and the third party site is either unable or unwilling to allow us to track.
2. If the conversion happens off our site, we don’t have the right technology in place to tie a campaign to a conversion (let’s say a submitted inquiry form or application).
3. We don’t think we have an actual conversion to track – for instance if the particular website in question is only informational, etc.
4. There are several owners of all websites and to try and track traffic much less conversion is so complicated and political that it’s just not worth it.
5. Folks are worried about the implications for privacy.

Whatever the case, it seems as though we really want to. Now we just need help to be able to do it.

Another area of the report that was interesting was the question, “who spends at least 20% of his/her time working on analytics?” 35% responded either 1, 2, or 3 people. This astounds me – in a good way. I was shocked to find that number so large as I realize that so many people in the higher ed web world are jacks of all trades. Obviously it would be awesome if at least some reported that, “it’s my entire job,” but … baby steps. As an industry we’re certainly nowhere near that yet. It’s definitely a good start, though. I know there were 50% that responded nobody : ( but this surprised me much less. I actually thought that number would have been higher.

Although the majority of people said they were tracking the basics – visits, page views, etc, when we get past the basics, the percentage really drops off. I wonder why. Is this because of a lack of resources? Is it because of the lack of *insights* we’re getting? If it is the lack of insights, the catch-22 here is that you’ll almost never get insights from the very basic metrics, especially if there is no segmentation (unless your site is down and your visits just flat-lined). That was something I also wondered about.

Anyway, I think the report shows both that we’re doing great stuff and there is also a long way to go. But we’re headed in the right direction. : )

Making web analytics a priority

So let’s get this party started! Starting August 12, on the 2nd Thursday of each month, we will be collecting data to start the analytics revolution in higher education. Karine’s group will then release the benchmarking data from the previous month at the end of month. For example, July’s benchmarking data will be released at the end of August and so forth.

To get a benchmarking report, all you need to do is participate in the benchmarking. Go to the HigherEdAnalytics website to join the revolution.

So, I’ve blabbed long enough. Go read the executive summary. I’d love to know your thoughts.

It’s about time we start a revolution … and we need your help! You know how important web analytics is for higher education websites, but we need to spread the word. So, where do we start? With a benchmark, of course.

Last week Karine Joly launched the “State of Higher Ed Online Analytics” survey to get a better idea of where we are as an industry with our use of web analytics.

Complete the survey today!

Enter your email address at the end of the survey to receive an executive summary in July highlighting the survey results.

Thanks to Karine for putting together the survey and starting the revolution!

Survey closes on May 24th.

Later today our annual inter-squad scrimmage (the “Blue/White game”) will be televised on EPSN2. We have a commercial airing twice during the game and I’m getting ready to track the impact on traffic to our site.

Obviously this won’t be a super popular game on TV – mostly very loyal fans and alumni, but that’s ok. It will still have some impact.

Here is what I plan on monitoring over the weekend to see how much of an impact the commercial (and even the game) had on traffic:

1. Visit trend
2. % branded keywords referrals
3. % direct traffic
4. % referral traffic from our main university website (psu.edu)
5. % goals completed from branded keywords referrals
6. % goals completed from direct traffic
7. % goals completed from main university referral traffic

When looking at these reports, I have to remember that “like” date ranges matter. For instance, I won’t want to measure the difference in those metrics from yesterday to today because I know that our traffic goes down naturally on weekends (Friday and Saturday aren’t like days). This weekend should be compared to last weekend. Further, I need to keep in mind that the game itself (regardless of the commercial) will likely have an impact on traffic. Unfortunately we don’t have a “like” weekend to run it against (a weekend where our blue/white game aired on ESPN2 without the commercial). So, we’ll have to make due with just realizing that the commercial itself may not have caused the traffic.

I do think the metrics that have to do with branded keyword referrals and direct traffic can show impact from the commercial itself. Why? Because they have to do specifically with users seeking us out by our unit name (not just happening on our site or coming to our site from our main university site).

What do you think? What other metrics should I be looking at?

This post is long overdue. I wanted to do a review of Brian Clifton’s book Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics (second edition) last month when it came out. For those of us in higher education, this book is essential reading. Period.

When it comes to web analytics and, specifically Google Analytics, Brian Clifton is at the top. The book is the second edition, but it is so much more than just an update of the first book – it’s almost a complete re-write. So much has happened since the first book came out. You can read all about it over on Brian’s blog.

Full disclosure: I was lucky enough to read the book before it was published and offer feedback and comments. I’ve never done that before, but what an excellent learning experience!

So, let’s get down to the book. The name of it says “advanced” but you don’t need to be an advanced user of Google Analytics to get a lot out of it. It takes you from the very basics of what web analytics is, how to get started with both web analytics and Google Analytics all the way to advanced topics and techniques.
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I’ve written about segmentation in the past, but I still don’t think we give it the importance it deserves. There are so many valuable insights you can gain from using segmentation. Even more important, if you are only looking at your data in aggregate, without segmenting it, you can be making decisions based on misleading information.

Take this example – let’s say you open up your analytics tool and see that, on average, users view 5 pages per visit. Ok, pretty good. You take note and move on.  But if you used segmentation, you might see that the pages per visit is completely different depending on the type of user. Let’ say on average:

• IE users view 7 pages per visit
• Firefox users view 4 pages per visit
• Chrome users view 2 pages per visit
• Mobile users only view 1 page per visit
• Campaign A users only view 1 page per visit

Of course these are made up numbers, but you get my point. Doesn’t this tell you much more? My site doesn’t seem to render well on mobile devices and campaign A needs a good look.

The fact that my site averages 5 pages per visit actually tells me absolutely nothing.

This is why segmentation is essential. Averages are misleading.
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I love talking to colleagues about web analytics and yesterday I got to do just that – but on a much larger scale.

A little background … Penn State is very large. We have about 43,000 students at main campus and about 78,000 students throughout all of our campuses. Needless to say we have a lot of websites – I can’t even guess how many we have – 200? 400? 500? Not sure. It’s a lot, though. That much I know.

With so many websites owned by so many different units, community is so important. We have a great web community with a fantastic annual web conference and yesterday we started a different kind of web community – one devoted to web analytics.

Since most units at Penn State use Google Analytics, it was called the Google Analytics User Group kickoff event. Going forward we’re probably going to call it something less tool-specific, but we’ll see.

Some great folks at the Penn State Libraries – including doteduguru Nikki Massaro Kauffman – put the event together. It was an awesome event  and the attendee list was completely full only a few days after invitations went out.

We gathered in the morning at the libraries to kick off the event with an open panel – discussing how Google Analytics was being used at the university within different departments. It was so great to hear the different ways web analytics is having an impact at the university and how website owners are using it. Experience with the tool (and analytics in general) ran the gamut from just getting started to years of experience.

There were many sessions throughout the day including methodologies (which led into a discussion about privacy issues), Google Analytics implementation, new users, and reporting.

At the wrap up discussion we talked about how we will continue with the community. I’m very excited to continue the conversation within Penn State and we already have ideas of specific projects going forward. What a great way to end the week! I’m excited to continue the conversation.

I recently read Joseph Carrabis’ fantastic posts – The Unfulfilled Promise of Online Analytics part I and part II. If you haven’t read them already – do so. They are so thought-provoking and written like no other analytics posts you’ll ever read. Really great stuff.

For an analytics evangelist like myself, reading them was both a breath of fresh air and a punch in the gut.
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This will be a short post, as I’ve written about link styles before, specifically about how using underlined links in body text is still a best practice. If underlining is out of the question, then at least use a color that is in complete contrast to the text color. Why am I bringing this up again? I happened to be browsing some higher ed sites earlier this afternoon and I couldn’t help but notice that the trend seems to be getting worse, not better. Why?

Is it that we’re spending so much time focused on more complex user-friendliness issues (ie., can users navigate the site, is our online application usable, etc) that it’s almost like we’ve forgotten one of the fundamentals?

Dressing up link text with hover styles does nothing for the scanning eye. Finding what words are links on a website shouldn’t be an easter egg hunt. We should know *immediately* when we glance at a page that a word or phrase is a link, not after we move the mouse over it.

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It seems that some (notice I said some, not all!) higher education web professionals still don’t think using web analytics on their site is useful.

Why do I think this? It became apparent after a couple conversations during the HighEdWeb conference I recently attended in Milwaukee. First, let me say that this has nothing to do with the conference. It was a fantastic conference and I learned a ton from the great presenters and attendees. I would go again in an instant.

More than once, however, I found myself in the midst of a conversation about how using web analytics is pretty much “useless.”

I doubt that the people in the conversation had any idea who I was (who would?) and that I was actually presenting at the conference about web analytics (both conversations took place before the presentation). So, I decided to keep my mouth shut and just listen. I wanted to see *why* they thought web analytics was useless on their sites before I jumped in to defend the practice.

Conversations like these happen all the time. They could have very easily happened at any of our campuses. In any of our offices. I’ve heard it all before and I’m sure I’ll hear it many times again. So, I’ll bring up some excuses I heard and offer some recommendations.

So … here goes …
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Tomorrow, bright and early, I’ll be on my way to the HighEdWeb Conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  I know I will be learning a ton. I’m also looking forward to meeting some great people I’ve been conversing with via blogs, Twitter, and the like for so long.

Joshua Ellis, a fellow Penn State Outreach-er, and I will be presenting “Actionable Web Analytics” on Tuesday morning. We have a terrific time slot.  This will be our 4th presentation in less than a year and I’m really looking forward to it.

I’ve been looking through the selection of sessions and I think I have mine almost picked out. So far, I’ve picked out:

• Building a Strategic Plan with Douglas Tschopp – This is my first time to highedweb conference and Douglas is the program chair of the conference. I’m looking forward to his session on creating a communications plan.
• Talking to your boss about Twitter with Lori Packer – This presentation seems really interesting and I’m curious to see how Lori will bring ROI into the conversation.
• Goal-Driven Web Strategy: Implementing Technology with an Eye on ROI with Karlyn Morissette – Hey, it’s a session on web strategy and ROI. Is there any doubt in your mind that I would be there? Plus, I’ve been following Karlyn for a while via Twitter, .eduGuru, and her own blog and am looking forward to meeting her.
• The Kids Are Alright with Mark Greenfield – I met Mark a couple  years ago at the Penn State Web Conference and have been following him on Twitter,  delicious, and the University Web Developer’s ning site he started. It will be great to see him again.
• This is Not a Brand with Doug Gapinski – When I read this session description I loved it and was instantly thinking of specific examples of this happening. You can’t go wrong with someone from mStoner, either.

I haven’t made my mind up about the other sessions yet, but must say that there are a lot of great sessions to choose from. I will definitely learn a lot.

I don’t plan on live-blogging, however, I will be tweeting throughout the conference.  There will be many others doing the same. Follow #heweb09 to catch updates.