When it comes to collecting insights from your school website, there is nothing more convenient and efficient than using Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a free web analytics service that allows you to see the historical data of your visitors’ behaviour whenever they access your school website. It is a valuable tool that can help you attract more website traffic, make your viewers stay longer and get more leads through online registrations.
Mastering the use of Google Analytics can be tricky for most marketers, especially first time users, due to the overwhelming amount of data it provides. In order to get a proper grounding in this service and to learn the essential metrics of your school website, you must first become familiar with these Google Analytics reports and learn how to read them.
Channels report
Do you want to know where your visitors are coming from? The Channels report can give you a general overview of your school website visits, tracking data in real-time such as the number of new visitors and leads per channels and the number of pages your visitors check. Here are the channels that you can track in this report:
- Organic search – clicked links through search engine results
- Email – clicked a link in email marketing campaigns, like newsletters
- Direct – typed your school website URL through their web browser
- Referral – clicked a link to your school website from a different website
- Social – clicked your school website links from social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn
- Paid Search – clicked your online ads on Google AdWords and other paid channels.
By determining which of your channels are bringing in the most number of visitors and leads, you can develop strategies to optimise your high-performing channels and find solutions to increase your visit traffic from underutilised channels.
All Pages report
With the All Pages report, you can check the number of views for each page of your website and the average amount of time spent browsing these pages. By knowing which pages are underperforming in terms of view count and duration, you will be able to identify the kinds of content that pique the interest of your visitors. Additionally, you can take advantage of your high-performing pages by promoting them on your social media.
One particularly helpful metric in this report is the Page Value number, which represents the proportion of value a page holds relative to your overall financial goal, which equates to the average enrolment and tuition fee. When calibrated correctly, this metric will help you determine which pages lead to most conversions and deliver more value to your website and for your budget.
Landing Page report
This report does not only refer to the landing pages where your prospects register. In this case, a landing page is the first page your prospects visit, so your home page or a blog post can be considered landing pages as well. This report can help you identify pages that are effective in retaining your prospects once they visit your page. Metrics in this report include the average number of pages that are visited after the landing page and the number of visitors who leave the site after checking a page from your website. By checking the performance of each landing page in your website you will be able to determine your visitors’ level of engagement and interest. In terms of lead generation, you can check the conversion rate of each of your landing pages.
The key to using Google Analytics is to check your relevant metrics regularly and to respond to the needs of your school website and its visitors. Once you master this service, you’ll be able to generate data-driven results which will contribute greatly to your overall school marketing initiatives.
