Getting a better understanding of how people are using your school’s website is crucial to ensuring that parents, pupils and staff get the best out of it and can easily find the information they need.
But where do you start?
Google Analytics is a really useful free tool that will give your school the data and statistics it needs to give website users the very best experience.
Information is not only provided in real time, you can also compare periods of time against each other and check month by month on the performance of your school website.
There is such a vast range of information provided by Google Analytics that to become an expert in understanding it all takes time and will more than likely involve training.
However, there are some basic elements that will provide useful insights into your website’s performance and what users are looking at that you can use straight away.
Getting started
First of all, you will need to set up a Google Analytics account and add some code to your website to make sure analytics can track user behaviour. Your school IT support should be able to help you with this.
Once you’ve added the code, you’re all set to gain really useful website insights.
Here’s five simple Google Analytics insights and how to use them:
Use the Acquisition tool and under ‘All Traffic’ you’ll find ‘Channels’. This will give you an overview where your website visitors come from. You can drill down further into the categories for more specific information such as which social channels are being used etc.
You might need to change the design of your website to make sure that the navigation is efficient and easy to use. But this will be a good investment of resources as it makes your school website much more user-friendly.
Use the Behaviour tool and under ‘Site Content’ you will find ‘All Pages’. This will give you an overview of the most popular pages on your website and how many people are looking at them.
Use the Audience tool and under ‘Mobile’ you will find ‘Overview’. This gives you a list of the devices your website is being viewed on. You can also drill down further to see exactly what model of that particular device is being used.
In the top right-hand corner, you will see a date range. If you click on that, you can specify the period of time you want to create a report on. You can use pre-set date ranges, or you can custom apply a date range. You can even be extremely specific – which would be useful to track the performance of a particular school communication or activity.These are just a few insights to get you started. Knowing your website, how it performs and how people are using it is invaluable – the better you understand it, the better your website will be.Finding out what’s popular, learning where your visitors are coming from and what they’re looking for will help you to ensure that you have the best website design and navigation. And while we know there are statutory documents that every school website has to show – if you have information that isn’t being viewed, there’s not much point in you or your staff spending time putting it on there.
Make sure your content is relevant (what people are looking for) and easy to find – make your navigation simple and promote popular content on your home page.
Google Analytics is free and easy to use and is your first step to gaining insights into how your website works and in helping you to improve it.
Don’t forget as a Lite subscriber you can also access the wealth of articles we have available under the Free package too. If you’re pleased with the results you’ve achieved using the Lite package you can sign up to our waiting list for the Premium package which will be coming soon and will help boost your brand presence even further with consultative support and access to industry experts.