At mStoner, we talk with our clients about goals from the start and how we’ll measure success.
Google Analytics (GA) is a great resource for measuring overall site improvement, among many other things. Here are the average results for five common and high-level GA metrics from our clients who launched their sites within the last year. (Caveat: Results can vary for a variety of reasons from one institution to the next.)
For the three months after a website redesign, compared with the same three months in the prior year:
It is clear there’s a real impact on increasing audience size and engagement after a website redesign.
[Tweet “Data proves positive top-level web traffic improvements within 3 months post-redesign. #mStoner”]
Specific goals for key audiences still matter a great deal, but it’s also important (often to senior leadership) to deliver positive top-level web traffic improvements with website redesign projects. Within these numbers are opportunities to increase goal conversions based on higher traffic and more engaged visitors. Web analytics work is an ongoing effort to understand and improve a site, but starting a project with positive gains is always a bonus and provides plenty to work with.
What about bounce rate and session duration?
Both numbers were flat, on average, for these sites. Here’s why:
When looking at top-level metrics such as pages per session or time on site for higher ed sites, goals for internal and external audiences are at odds with one another. We must engage and move some visitors to clear calls-to-action. Visitors in this camp include your local community who are getting to know the institution, prospective students considering applying, and alumni visiting the site to re-connect or donate. On the flip side, internal visitors (whether students, faculty, or staff) need to find what they’re looking for quickly and move on.
It might be difficult to compare analytics before and after a website redesign because the before and after data isn’t present or isn’t tracking the same content. If that’s the case, here are three things to consider to help tell the story of a redesign to your stakeholders:
So what’s the punchline? Numbers like these are just the beginning of the analytics story. They may be “vanity metrics,” but they are numbers our clients and their stakeholders ask about. Every project doesn’t experience gains in every high-level website metric. Each project is different in terms of how analytics are tracked prior to a relaunch, including how effective the previous site was, how much information architecture changed, how much new content was developed, and many other factors. It’s encouraging for our clients to see the impact of a website redesign and the opportunities a new site presents with a new set of tools. With mStoner’s approach to strategy and analytics, a website redesign can offer a terrific springboard for an institution’s website to better serve its audiences.
I presented a two-part webinar series on Google Analytics and Tag Manager back in August. We’ve packaged up the content and the webinar is available on-demand for $299. During the sessions, I covered how to identify meaningful and actionable data in Google Analytics and when to use (and how to implement) key features, including event tracking, goal-setting, campaigns, segments, and Tag Manager. Taking this training is a great first step to setting your site up for measurement success. If you have any questions, just leave a comment below!
Greg Zguta Director of Web Strategy I've been working on education web projects since the late 90's and enjoy visiting campuses and watching how technology has transformed higher education since I got my first email account at Oberlin College in 1992. Back then, I mostly used the web to check weather radar and sports scores . . . I suppose technology hasn't transformed everything yet.