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CASE All Districts Online 2023
Utilizing Web Analytics to Uncover Recruitment Gap ...
Utilizing Web Analytics to Uncover Recruitment Gaps and Increase Conversions
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<b>Hello everyone. Welcome to the session</b> <b>utilizing web analytics to uncover</b> <b>recruitment gaps and increase conversion.</b> <b>We'll be getting started shortly, but I</b> <b>have a few housekeeping notes for you. On</b> <b>the right hand side of the screen you</b> <b>will see a window with the Chat, Q&A,</b> <b>Feedback and Notes tab. You can use the</b> <b>chat box to chat with other attendees,</b> <b>but use the Q&A box to send questions in</b> <b>for our presenters. You could also upload</b> <b>these questions in the Q&A panel if you</b> <b>would like to see that these questions be</b> <b>answered at the end of the session. Time</b> <b>permits we will answer as many questions</b> <b>as we can in the Notes tab.</b> <b>You can keep your own notes during the</b> <b>session if you would like to. We ask</b> <b>that you complete a brief evaluation</b> <b>that's found in the feedback tag at the</b> <b>end of this session. We use the session</b> <b>view back to continue improving what we</b> <b>offer as we very much appreciate you</b> <b>taking the time. Without further ado,</b> <b>please join me in welcoming our</b> <b>presenters Alex Garrido and Perla</b> <b>Pequeno. Thank you.</b> <b>Hi, everybody. Well, we're very</b> <b>excited to be here</b> <b>presenting to you guys. We had this</b> <b>presentation in the past and I think it</b> <b>was very helpful for everybody. We love</b> <b>providing this information. So my name is</b> <b>Perla. I am from the University of</b> <b>Texas Rio Grande Valley and I act</b> <b>as the Web Strategy Assistant</b> <b>Director. And then with me I</b> <b>have Alex Garrido. I</b> <b>am the director of Digital Marketing and</b> <b>Marketing Analytics.</b> <b>Awesome. So we are</b> <b>super geeks about data and analytics.</b> <b>I must say that. We love</b> <b>diving into data. We love</b> <b>analyzing everything. We love under</b> <b>trying to understand everything. Of</b> <b>course we don't know everything about it,</b> <b>so our main focus has always</b> <b>been being able to gather</b> <b>information. No pain points, key points.</b> <b>How can we make things a little bit</b> <b>better, especially. On our field, which</b> <b>is pretty much the digital, the digital</b> <b>end, right. So in this</b> <b>presentation what we wanted to talk about</b> <b>the most is recruitment.</b> <b>So it's a little bit different when it</b> <b>comes to recruitment than many</b> <b>other departments or many</b> <b>other areas or fields. When it comes to</b> <b>analytics. Right</b> <b>now, we have seen a</b> <b>very dramatic decrease of</b> <b>interest from different students</b> <b>regarding wanting to even just go</b> <b>to get a higher education or</b> <b>just getting a degree.</b> <b>Certificate. And it's very puzzling to</b> <b>us, right, why this shift</b> <b>or this change in the mindset of this</b> <b>younger generation that's coming</b> <b>along?So to us we</b> <b>usually just run to data.</b> <b>Recently we discovered a few</b> <b>articles that you know kind of like</b> <b>backed all this information. So</b> <b>back on spring 2022</b> <b>there was a notice of</b> <b>4.1% and this came from a</b> <b>report from the National Student Clearing</b> <b>House research and</b> <b>when compared to 20/21 it</b> <b>was decreasing the amount of people that.</b> <b>Wanted to inquire about higher</b> <b>education and the scary thing</b> <b>about it for us that our main</b> <b>focus is recruitment. Is</b> <b>that there many experts do</b> <b>mention that this is actually going to</b> <b>continue, right? And it's going to</b> <b>continue all the way to</b> <b>who knows when. The projected</b> <b>one is that by 2025</b> <b>we will have a 15% drop and</b> <b>it's a little bit. It's</b> <b>a little bit unsettling for us, right?</b> <b>Like why? Why is this happening? How can</b> <b>we help our own recruitment</b> <b>teams, right? So we work on the</b> <b>marketing side and the marketing side</b> <b>is is able to provide campaigns for our</b> <b>teams, is able to help them out,</b> <b>getting website set up, trying</b> <b>to get different touch points for the</b> <b>students. So when this kind of</b> <b>statistics come to us, it's a little</b> <b>bit. Worrisome and in our</b> <b>end is trying to figure out how we can</b> <b>give the right tools to our</b> <b>recruitment team and the right data to</b> <b>our recruitment team to be able to</b> <b>move past this landscape. Right to</b> <b>be able to drive positive</b> <b>results, get better focus,</b> <b>get those perspective students and</b> <b>understand them a little bit better to</b> <b>get to our and institutional goals</b> <b>right. And this has been much and</b> <b>on that note, I mean something that</b> <b>maybe is important for other institutions</b> <b>to know is in our approach, we are</b> <b>centralized marketing. So we</b> <b>control most of the marketing happening</b> <b>across our entire institution. And</b> <b>So what we do is we partner up with each</b> <b>individual department and we approach</b> <b>them with the data, We approach them with</b> <b>the insights. Hey, we're seeing a decline</b> <b>in traffic referral traffic to your</b> <b>website. Did you delete?Something that</b> <b>you move, something in the folder</b> <b>structure, are you adding the right meta</b> <b>tags, meta keywords? What is</b> <b>happening Then we're seeing that the</b> <b>client or we saw an increase. What</b> <b>happened? We're constantly monitoring and</b> <b>partnering up with other areas, with</b> <b>other departments to ensure that together</b> <b>collectively, we can make meaning out of</b> <b>the data. And so with that</b> <b>web analytics for sure, yeah,</b> <b>yeah, so a lot of the things that we</b> <b>find. Are that it is</b> <b>very hard to talk to other departments</b> <b>about web analytics when maybe sometimes</b> <b>they don't really understand what that</b> <b>is. They understand that there's numbers</b> <b>and they understand that there is a few</b> <b>key points that they need to keep in</b> <b>mind. But we normally try</b> <b>to provide a a well</b> <b>understanding of what web analytics is</b> <b>and if somebody hasn't in the past.</b> <b>Kind of like done a little bit more</b> <b>research on web analytics or maybe you</b> <b>have been like a little bit intrigued by</b> <b>it but not necessarily know everything</b> <b>about it. A quick brief or</b> <b>description about it is web analytics.</b> <b>It's it's described pretty much as</b> <b>a measurement and collection</b> <b>analysis and reporting of Internet data.</b> <b>That's pretty much what it is, is</b> <b>gathering data, collecting it.</b> <b>Being able to look into it and</b> <b>report on it based on your goals</b> <b>right? For a specific purpose</b> <b>for us?We use we use a</b> <b>lot of like web analytics tools. For</b> <b>example, Google Analytics support is the</b> <b>most popular ones. But you will find that</b> <b>schools can find which</b> <b>advertisement medium. For example print</b> <b>, e-mail, social media</b> <b>whether it's radio right or</b> <b>television is most effective</b> <b>for your end goal. With web analytics we</b> <b>can measure all of that we can figure</b> <b>out. What exactly to</b> <b>do to target a specific audience?</b> <b>What tone to use to target a</b> <b>specific audience? All of that is</b> <b>part of kind of like.</b> <b>Collecting this data and then being able</b> <b>to intake it, analyze it and then</b> <b>putting it out into kind of like</b> <b>translating it right into words to</b> <b>different departments that they can</b> <b>understand, right? And it's very</b> <b>insightful, right for your institution as</b> <b>well. Really understanding</b> <b>who your audiences are, really</b> <b>understanding who is actually clicking.</b> <b>Is it parents? Is it perspective,</b> <b>students, undergrads, grads, Is it</b> <b>international students?You know who</b> <b>else is coming to your side, who else is</b> <b>coming to those digital touch points?</b> <b>And even print like it doesn't just have</b> <b>to be digital. But even</b> <b>print, being able to</b> <b>track all that information is very</b> <b>important and that is all part of the</b> <b>world of web analytics</b> <b>and something interesting on that. On</b> <b>that note, everything can be tracked,</b> <b>everything can be trackable because all</b> <b>the marketing and public relation</b> <b>activities that you have are generating</b> <b>ripples within within your community. And</b> <b>so for example, one time we wanted to</b> <b>make sure that the campaign that we were</b> <b>running on traditional. TV,</b> <b>it was being successful. And So what we</b> <b>did is we actually matched the timing for</b> <b>the approximate runtime for</b> <b>those commercial TV spots. We matched it</b> <b>to the activity on the website and we</b> <b>isolated only to people who</b> <b>maybe are visiting the website for the</b> <b>first time. And we saw a</b> <b>modest increase, but it did spark</b> <b>curiosity. And at the end of the day,</b> <b>your website is your main recruitment</b> <b>hub, your website. Your primary</b> <b>recruitment resource and so everything</b> <b>can be tied back to information and</b> <b>behavior happening within your site.</b> <b>Yes, I agree to that. It's about behavior</b> <b>patterns, right? So you just have to</b> <b>follow that and you have to be able to.</b> <b>And translate this data in something</b> <b>meaningful that makes</b> <b>an insightful discovery for</b> <b>you, right. Everybody is different. Every</b> <b>institution has different goals and every</b> <b>department has different goals within the</b> <b>institution. It's just a matter of how</b> <b>exactly you target that data</b> <b>and you use that data. And</b> <b>so moving on, we do have some</b> <b>of the tools that we use for Google</b> <b>Analytics. We don't use all of the tools,</b> <b>but I will say. That we use most of them</b> <b>right here, and there's many more, right?</b> <b>So to begin with we have Google</b> <b>Search Console. Obviously this</b> <b>is pretty much analyzes your</b> <b>schools organic search and ranking Google</b> <b>Analytics. Which provides traffic</b> <b>information, conversions, visits,</b> <b>all of that insightful information</b> <b>Facebook Insights. It's more about your</b> <b>Facebook ads and showcasing the</b> <b>performance in your Facebook</b> <b>page. All my</b> <b>business monitors your business profile</b> <b>page. So a lot of people</b> <b>might sometimes forget about your Google</b> <b>Business profile page, right? And</b> <b>sometimes we ignore it because we say,</b> <b>ah, you know, I have a lot of stuff to do</b> <b>in my own website or in Facebook</b> <b>analytics or social</b> <b>media Google ads, but.</b> <b>There's a lot of people that do go to</b> <b>your business pages and there's a lot of</b> <b>information that you can get out of all</b> <b>the behaviors, all the clicks, all the</b> <b>visits that happen in that Google,</b> <b>Facebook. I mean, sorry, Google Business</b> <b>page. I mean, just by looking at</b> <b>Maps, you know how many people are going</b> <b>to your your base, sorry,</b> <b>your business page and looking at</b> <b>where you're located, directions to it</b> <b>many people overlook. But all of that is</b> <b>data that can be gathered and can be</b> <b>collected and definitely used for</b> <b>later. For sure. Other</b> <b>tools that we can use is CRM tools and</b> <b>marketing automation tools. So these are</b> <b>a little bit more detailed. There are</b> <b>more recruitment specific recruitment</b> <b>focus. And of course</b> <b>Google Apps. So we use, I want to say,</b> <b>all of it that you have here</b> <b>in front of us, obviously very specific</b> <b>tools. We have used some other ones, but</b> <b>having all of these together,</b> <b>working in unison together gives</b> <b>you enormous touch points, enormous</b> <b>information about your own institution.</b> <b>So many people might ask, OK, this is</b> <b>web analytics. Great, what am I looking</b> <b>for? What am I looking for in web</b> <b>analytics in my reports? What do I need</b> <b>to be checking for? So these</b> <b>are a few general key metrics</b> <b>that we do look for. Again, these</b> <b>are basic and then as you start getting a</b> <b>little bit more in depth with</b> <b>analytics, you're going to see that</b> <b>there's a lot more very specific, very</b> <b>custom made key. Metrics that you can</b> <b>do. These are pretty much what you would</b> <b>say out-of-the-box, right? So you</b> <b>have views, how many people come into</b> <b>your site to look at the site visits,</b> <b>how many people scroll to your site</b> <b>that session is more or less the time you</b> <b>know that they spent in it. User</b> <b>engagement and clicks, clicks, obviously</b> <b>all the links that they are clicking</b> <b>through, so.</b> <b>Talking about key metrics in web</b> <b>analytics, so web analytics can</b> <b>be directly tied to a specific goal,</b> <b>right. In our case for</b> <b>recruitment team is being able to</b> <b>enroll people, being able to touch base</b> <b>with somebody, being an inquiry,</b> <b>something of that sort. In</b> <b>brief, these key metrics, key performance</b> <b>indicators are measurements and that's</b> <b>what you want, you want to make sure you</b> <b>can measure something out. You can</b> <b>measure a click. You can measure a view,</b> <b>You can measure a session. Um.</b> <b>So these are pretty much going</b> <b>to help you to see what's the progress</b> <b>that you have gone that you have</b> <b>achieved pretty much towards the goal</b> <b>so. Some of the forms</b> <b>that that these key metrics will play</b> <b>will be maybe on online inquiries. Again,</b> <b>people making bookings or</b> <b>reservations for maybe</b> <b>a campus tour or a campus visit</b> <b>or an engagement for</b> <b>a admissions</b> <b>counselor. Something of that sort is</b> <b>always going to be the the</b> <b>form in which you will get to a goal with</b> <b>this key metric. So if there's a. Like</b> <b>that somebody looks to book a reservation</b> <b>time. If there is a bill that somebody</b> <b>goes into the campus tour page to look at</b> <b>that form or that page, that is</b> <b>all part of it, all works together</b> <b>to help each other out.</b> <b>What else do we have? I think these are</b> <b>these are it for the key metrics,</b> <b>Yeah, and and. And building on that,</b> <b>you need to take an approach, a holistic</b> <b>approach to understanding your metrics. A</b> <b>single value on your Google Analytics</b> <b>report might not tell you the complete</b> <b>picture, but looking at the</b> <b>correlation of how all of your metrics</b> <b>across the board play together can give</b> <b>you a more complete picture. So for</b> <b>example. Uh, maybe you're seeing an</b> <b>increase in in your Google</b> <b>Maps requests for directions?And so</b> <b>you might think, Oh my God, that is</b> <b>fantastic. They're actually looking for</b> <b>our directions and visiting our campus</b> <b>more. But maybe you also saw</b> <b>that the About us campus location</b> <b>page has a decrease in</b> <b>traffic. Maybe somebody deleted</b> <b>something that they shouldn't have and</b> <b>now they don't have access to that</b> <b>information and they're having to rely on</b> <b>other other tools, other other methods to</b> <b>finding out how to reach campus.</b> <b>And so this is just again. You need to</b> <b>interrogate your metrics, like why am I</b> <b>seeing this? Why are more people looking</b> <b>at my Google, my Business, my Google</b> <b>Maps? And Google keeps changing the name</b> <b>of these things. So I apologize also for</b> <b>Google and Facebook because now it's like</b> <b>meta and you know all of that. Even our</b> <b>Facebook Rep actually calls it Facebook.</b> <b>Well, sorry, our meta Rep still calls it</b> <b>Facebook. So that's why we just left it</b> <b>as Facebook. But looking at all of that</b> <b>and matching it like for example, are you</b> <b>getting more?Losers inside your Google</b> <b>Analytics analytics for</b> <b>and Are they asking more questions? Are</b> <b>they coming to your side because they're</b> <b>asking more questions directly on Google?</b> <b>Maybe you created a campaign and</b> <b>the Facebook ads are triggering some sort</b> <b>of curiosity, but that curiosity is</b> <b>not much by a direct action. Maybe you</b> <b>never saw the the the traffic</b> <b>spike from your Facebook ads, but you saw</b> <b>a traffic spike for. Somewhat related</b> <b>keywords on Google Organic Search Console</b> <b>and so this is what it means to</b> <b>interrogate your metrics. Like don't look</b> <b>at metrics and isolation. It is not a</b> <b>silo. It needs to be thought about as a</b> <b>holistic approach because all of</b> <b>it is painting the data landscape</b> <b>for you and it's giving you the insights.</b> <b>It's giving you the approach that you</b> <b>need to take, whether it is, you</b> <b>need to have people complete an inquiry</b> <b>form, whether it's your. Tracking</b> <b>donations, whether it is you're tracking,</b> <b>perhaps event attendance, all of</b> <b>that, all of this information is giving</b> <b>you the picture from multiple angles and</b> <b>it's through those perspectives, through</b> <b>the analysis of those perspectives, then</b> <b>you actually get meaningful, real</b> <b>insights and so.</b> <b>And then of course we all are familiar</b> <b>with different funnels. And again, now</b> <b>one hour biggest goals is actually</b> <b>recruit more students, particularly</b> <b>graduate students. We have amazing online</b> <b>accelerated masters programs by the way.</b> <b>Check them out whenever you get a chance.</b> <b>Were primary goal is recruitment and and</b> <b>so within this stage you can measure</b> <b>and and create correlations with</b> <b>your metrics in all sorts of different</b> <b>ways. So for example on the perspective</b> <b>stage maybe you can consider that</b> <b>the overall Google Maps listing</b> <b>views of pictures, because if they're</b> <b>shopping around for pictures that could</b> <b>give you an idea of what people are</b> <b>looking for on your site,</b> <b>whether it's inquiries the actual people</b> <b>who. Have already submitted an inquiry</b> <b>form. The amazing thing about Google</b> <b>Analytics 4 is that now you can create.</b> <b>Very accurate behavioral profiles,</b> <b>audience profiles of your audience. And</b> <b>you can say, you know what this person</b> <b>ended up submitting an inquiry form.</b> <b>What let's backtrack the steps</b> <b>and let's see what that person did before</b> <b>that. And so you're able to create the</b> <b>complete picture of what your recruitment</b> <b>funnel looks like based on that</b> <b>interaction. Maybe they also came because</b> <b>of a Facebook ad or an Instagram ad</b> <b>and so this basically. Allows you</b> <b>to put it all together. And</b> <b>having access to these tools, having</b> <b>access to these resources as an</b> <b>institutional on an institutional</b> <b>level is what's going to actually drive</b> <b>your true potential for</b> <b>utilizing web analytics to</b> <b>uncover recruitment gaps.</b> <b>Um, so how do you,</b> <b>how do you actually end up approaching</b> <b>this? Well, very easily. You make sure</b> <b>you track everything. Make sure you track</b> <b>everything. And make sure you share that</b> <b>information. Share that data. Because you</b> <b>might be thinking that something</b> <b>happened. But when you talk to the people</b> <b>who are actually in the field, maybe with</b> <b>the recruiters, you might end up finding</b> <b>something else completely different. A</b> <b>funny example. We actually</b> <b>were amazed at the particular campaign</b> <b>and was driving a lot of traffic, a lot</b> <b>of little traffic. And in</b> <b>that particular campaign, it was through</b> <b>meta Facebook ads and.</b> <b>And we ended up finding out then through</b> <b>the program director, then the traffic</b> <b>that was generated, it was not generating</b> <b>the traffic then she wanted for her</b> <b>program because her program had a</b> <b>very particular profile,</b> <b>students and very specific credentials</b> <b>and she wanted for that program. And so</b> <b>even though it was successful in driving</b> <b>traffic, it was not driving the right</b> <b>kind of traffic. And So what did we do?</b> <b>We added additional screening criteria to</b> <b>the campaign we added. Additional</b> <b>screening criteria to the web form and we</b> <b>track, we make sure we track everything</b> <b>and that's how we were able to find out</b> <b>what actually worked for her particular</b> <b>campaign. So again,</b> <b>it's all about getting creative. Don't</b> <b>think in silos. The data is not yours</b> <b>to hoard, it's yours to share across your</b> <b>institution. And the more conversations</b> <b>you get to have with your colleagues</b> <b>about like, hey, I am seeing this, I</b> <b>think that might be because of this, but</b> <b>I don't know, you may have a different</b> <b>idea. Please share your thoughts. The</b> <b>more you do that the more insights you're</b> <b>going to get and the more insight you</b> <b>get, the better you're going to be able</b> <b>to to, the more you're going to be able</b> <b>to. And cover those those gaps and</b> <b>improve your overall conversion funnel,</b> <b>whether it's for recruitment,</b> <b>retention or even donations.</b> <b>It's all about that, the data sharing.</b> <b>So in the technical side.</b> <b>Yeah, for sure. So let's get a little bit</b> <b>more technical about this, right. So we</b> <b>discussed about like patterns and sharing</b> <b>information, making sure you know that</b> <b>we all know exactly</b> <b>what's happening and if we don't,</b> <b>why isn't that right? But how do you</b> <b>actually go about doing that right on</b> <b>Google Analytics. So right now everybody</b> <b>should have already moved on to Google</b> <b>Analytics for hopefully and making</b> <b>sure and if you haven't, please, you know</b> <b>as soon as we're done here, go ahead and</b> <b>do it because you have nine days to</b> <b>finish that up. So if with Google</b> <b>Analytics for for, the cool thing about</b> <b>it is that. The changes that happen</b> <b>with it is everything goes by events. If</b> <b>you guys haven't really read much about</b> <b>it, Google Analytics for it</b> <b>tracks information based</b> <b>on events that happen in your</b> <b>site. So this can be</b> <b>information or events like</b> <b>pages that people load on your</b> <b>website, actions that</b> <b>somebody perform on the website,</b> <b>whether again that's one of the. One of</b> <b>the key metrics scrolling is an action,</b> <b>right? And through my mind</b> <b>last week is Pearl and I. We were</b> <b>talking about something we were trying to</b> <b>do and I didn't realize that you can</b> <b>now actually inside Google Analytics for</b> <b>you can track how many people click on</b> <b>closing those popups. Like you can</b> <b>actually track the</b> <b>exit below section. Yeah.</b> <b>Yep. So it's</b> <b>mind blowing. It's it's amazing.</b> <b>It's scary, but I think</b> <b>it's more amazing than scary. All the</b> <b>information that you can get from it is.</b> <b>Is is going beyond what we can probably</b> <b>handle right, Elements that are clicked,</b> <b>I again as Alex mentioned. So that's part</b> <b>of one of the elements that people can</b> <b>click on your site, whether if it's a</b> <b>button or whether if it's a close</b> <b>popup or whether if it's a tab or whether</b> <b>it's whatever the content that you have.</b> <b>Obviously talking to your web development</b> <b>team and making sure it is structured</b> <b>correctly to make sure that everything is</b> <b>targeted as it should, right?</b> <b>Information on URLs,</b> <b>transactions about products.</b> <b>Obviously we are a nonprofit institution,</b> <b>so we don't necessarily do transactions</b> <b>as in in one-on-one dollar base.</b> <b>But if we are talking about maybe</b> <b>what's called donations or giving or</b> <b>amounts, that comes into play. Right.</b> <b>Our focus again is recruitment. So we are</b> <b>a little bit detached from it, but it's</b> <b>still something that you can track if we</b> <b>ever wanted to dive into it, elements</b> <b>that are visible in the browser and then</b> <b>also. Like details that you can</b> <b>collect from your user. What's their age</b> <b>groups? You know who are the, what are</b> <b>the most popular age groups? Obviously</b> <b>locations. I know we had locations</b> <b>before. I think Google Analytics for</b> <b>really details. A little bit more on</b> <b>locations and then</b> <b>other information that you can grab from</b> <b>the user, the devices that they're</b> <b>using. It's all pretty</b> <b>great when it comes to trying to put a</b> <b>campaign together, right?Do you know</b> <b>exactly how you need to target them if</b> <b>they're not looking at a web page? Do you</b> <b>put it on an app? Do you put it on their</b> <b>phones? Do you put it on, I don't know,</b> <b>something different that if they're not</b> <b>looking online, you need to have it</b> <b>somewhere else. Which age groups do you</b> <b>want to send it to? Is this part of a</b> <b>Google ad that you want to target that</b> <b>audience to it? You know all of this</b> <b>inside information. It's part of being.</b> <b>You've seen all that technicality of</b> <b>it, so um, if you're</b> <b>not able to use the events that it</b> <b>already comes with Google Analytics. The</b> <b>cool thing is that via Google Tag</b> <b>Manager you are able to</b> <b>create customized event tags.</b> <b>And this is so great. Like you</b> <b>are able to be very specific, target very</b> <b>specific actions and very specific</b> <b>things. Label them however you want to,</b> <b>to make sure you know. And you get the</b> <b>right information that you want. As Alex</b> <b>mentioned, now they were trying to filter</b> <b>down to get that specific audience. Now</b> <b>they were trying to change different</b> <b>aspects to make sure that data was being</b> <b>transferred was detailed enough</b> <b>for the goals that they needed to to</b> <b>get out of that website or that</b> <b>action, right. So</b> <b>this is the Google Tag Manager actually</b> <b>lets you send new events for</b> <b>just about any action, any action that's</b> <b>taking place on your site, and</b> <b>then events are usually needed if a</b> <b>student is viewing maybe financial aid</b> <b>information. If it's crucial</b> <b>to flag something down in the financial</b> <b>aid website, you can do that via Google</b> <b>Tag Manager if it's not available already</b> <b>on the actions from G</b> <b>4. Google Analytics for So</b> <b>that's what's so great about it. And</b> <b>this creates less friction in the</b> <b>decision making, right, and being able to</b> <b>move through the process along smoothly.</b> <b>So going into conversions, this</b> <b>kind of goes leads into, OK, so now this</b> <b>is about improving conversions, right? If</b> <b>I know exactly how to target an audience</b> <b>and I know who is coming to my website,</b> <b>now what do I do? How do I make them,</b> <b>you know, move through my process</b> <b>online or how do I make them go from</b> <b>point A to Point C</b> <b>and finish renewing all</b> <b>that, all that process. So there's three.</b> <b>Crucial steps that we have</b> <b>identified and that those</b> <b>are actionable strategies.</b> <b>Optimizing your web pages for sure and</b> <b>then measuring, measuring the</b> <b>effectiveness, the changes that you've</b> <b>done. So with creating</b> <b>actionable strategies that</b> <b>refers more to obviously creating</b> <b>those targeted campaigns, those</b> <b>specific messaging that is based</b> <b>on the analytics that you</b> <b>gather, being personal,</b> <b>be able to personalize your</b> <b>content, being able to retarget</b> <b>those ads, this could be</b> <b>maybe creating the content, valuable</b> <b>content that. It's targeting that</b> <b>specific audience if somebody is not</b> <b>really engaging with you on the content</b> <b>that you have or on downloading a</b> <b>form or downloading a.</b> <b>I don't know a specific piece of</b> <b>information of your site. You need to</b> <b>change that. You need to make sure that</b> <b>it's part of your strategy to look at</b> <b>content, to look at the tone, and to look</b> <b>at who again you're targeting these two,</b> <b>if your voice and tone is not specific</b> <b>to that target audience or that popular</b> <b>audience is coming to your site. You're</b> <b>not. We're not going to be able to get</b> <b>you there, right. We need to make sure</b> <b>that we get this data that's being</b> <b>collected and then try to apply that</b> <b>information to those actionable</b> <b>strategies. Other things that</b> <b>can be done is again leveraging</b> <b>remarketing ads to</b> <b>reengage different visitors.</b> <b>And then optimizing your website. So a</b> <b>lot of people talk about optimizer, web</b> <b>optimize your page. All of that</b> <b>includes user experience. A lot of people</b> <b>disregard that. A lot and. Maybe</b> <b>just say I just want a really cool</b> <b>website in her really cool colors and</b> <b>really cool days and animations that are</b> <b>flying from here to there. Do we need to</b> <b>make sure that whenever you're targeting</b> <b>a specific audience, whenever you are</b> <b>trying to leverage all this information,</b> <b>look at the layout and the design of your</b> <b>of your site, of of your plan, right?</b> <b>This is what people are going to see, and</b> <b>the easier it is for them, the simplify</b> <b>it is for them. Is going to be much</b> <b>easier for them to convert. There's not.</b> <b>There's not going to be any way for them</b> <b>to be</b> <b>confused about a process, and it's just</b> <b>going to be easier for them to go into</b> <b>that conversion process, right?</b> <b>Conversion workflow. This</b> <b>includes, again, looking at your UX,</b> <b>making sure that your</b> <b>visitors are turning not just into</b> <b>just visitors, but into loyal customers</b> <b>per se. Some</b> <b>tips in that Look at your journey maps,</b> <b>making sure that you look at and</b> <b>create journey maps for all these</b> <b>targeted audiences. Make sure that you</b> <b>understand what drives those</b> <b>actions. And then also look at</b> <b>personas. Crack your personas</b> <b>for your website for your targeted</b> <b>campaigns making sure that.</b> <b>That particular audience is responding</b> <b>the way you want it to for those actions.</b> <b>Improving SEO is part of it as well.</b> <b>Making sure all your meta elements are</b> <b>included on pages and then</b> <b>identifying potential problems and those</b> <b>can be used can be identified with</b> <b>heat maps. So you can use your heat maps</b> <b>to figure out where are people stopping,</b> <b>where are people not scrolling anymore,</b> <b>not really engaging with your page</b> <b>anymore. Those are very useful. For</b> <b>that look at those, there's might be</b> <b>some free services that.</b> <b>Have trials that you can do and you can</b> <b>kind of test the waters with those, but</b> <b>definitely great things to use.</b> <b>And what other things? AB testing,</b> <b>AB testing is amazing. So</b> <b>we use AB testing. We'll look into our</b> <b>case study next, but we use like AB</b> <b>testing a lot to make sure that</b> <b>the stuff that we we were using, the</b> <b>layout, the design, the content that we</b> <b>were using was engaging to our user. And</b> <b>if it wasn't, then it was time for us to</b> <b>switch it out and test something else,</b> <b>you know, test something else, put it out</b> <b>there again, have that trial period,</b> <b>get your results back and then change it</b> <b>again. If you need to right, this is the</b> <b>only way that you're going to get the</b> <b>correct feedback to make your campaign</b> <b>successful. Um</b> <b>and on that.</b> <b>So what we did is we actually created a</b> <b>resource for all of you. So this is</b> <b>actually a copy paste</b> <b>dashboard, a copy paste analytics</b> <b>dashboard. It takes into account 2</b> <b>metrics. Again, the goal is to</b> <b>incorporate as many data points as</b> <b>possible into your dashboarding</b> <b>experience so that you can get more</b> <b>holistic insights. But this one in</b> <b>particular integrates too Google</b> <b>Analytics for. And Google Search</b> <b>Console. So you will need somebody who</b> <b>has access to this to go ahead and scan</b> <b>that QR code. You can pick a picture,</b> <b>screenshot or save the link</b> <b>udb dot link.</b> <b>This report that actually will take</b> <b>you to this data dashboard.</b> <b>That is, uh.</b> <b>That what this is actually the one then</b> <b>will allow you to use your own data and</b> <b>and you can just click on this use my own</b> <b>data and it will duplicate it for you and</b> <b>you will be able to make the connections</b> <b>and literally use exactly the same</b> <b>dashboard. Of course this is not using</b> <b>our university data this is using Google</b> <b>test data from the Google store. But</b> <b>just as an example this is the report</b> <b>as it is using our university data and I</b> <b>can select. Look in analysis for last</b> <b>month, this is for May and</b> <b>this is again Google Analytics for. And</b> <b>what it would do is it would kind of give</b> <b>me a snapshot of everything that happened</b> <b>last month when it comes to our</b> <b>Google Analytics account. And of</b> <b>course, it had to. Crash right</b> <b>now. One of the things that</b> <b>I did wanted to stress is I</b> <b>know that many departments are in</b> <b>different situations, but if you guys do</b> <b>not have access yet to this, but know</b> <b>that IT does, start having</b> <b>those conversations making sure that you</b> <b>know that collaboration comes together.</b> <b>Having this information is crucial,</b> <b>super crucial for you guys for knowing</b> <b>what to do right. This is about decision</b> <b>making and how did you go about it.</b> <b>So it I refresh and it's working.</b> <b>So again this is me and it will allow you</b> <b>to see the view of the page</b> <b>views and you had and you can analyze</b> <b>that versus your conversions. There might</b> <b>be times where both of them sync together</b> <b>and so that is giving you a signal,</b> <b>always be looking for signal, always be</b> <b>looking for clues. In my case</b> <b>here conversion for this particular</b> <b>analytics account conversions is anything</b> <b>that submits a form for recruitment</b> <b>either for graduate. They're on their</b> <b>graduate recruitment. That is what we</b> <b>consider our conversion in this analytics</b> <b>account. But you can define conversions</b> <b>in whichever metric you want. This is</b> <b>gonna give you again, that breakdown,</b> <b>automatic mirror, automatic report, the</b> <b>day of the week, event name, all of that.</b> <b>And it also allows you to see your</b> <b>audiences. So for example, in our case,</b> <b>we have an audience specifically for</b> <b>anybody who has submitted a graduate</b> <b>inquiry form, anybody who has visited the</b> <b>School of Podiatry. Anybody who has</b> <b>visited a specific program, we can create</b> <b>those custom audiences so that the</b> <b>analysis is tailored to that particular</b> <b>analysis. And that's one way you can</b> <b>uncover data. The other one is using</b> <b>Google Search Console to understand</b> <b>what questions people have around your</b> <b>content. And so this one actually</b> <b>allows you to navigate through</b> <b>the different questions that people may</b> <b>have. So for example is.</b> <b>This is. Going to filter my</b> <b>Google Search Console data by</b> <b>questions and start or include this and</b> <b>so here are all of the questions that</b> <b>people have asked in this particular time</b> <b>period regarding our institution.</b> <b>So again this is a.</b> <b>Trouble in your with that QR</b> <b>code? And again you just need to use</b> <b>Click here Use your own data and if</b> <b>you wanna know how to create your own</b> <b>audiences, here's a quick explainer. And</b> <b>here's a quick explainer if you want to</b> <b>further tailor your questions. Maybe</b> <b>you're looking for brand mentions and all</b> <b>of that. This kind of gives you an idea</b> <b>of how you can add that inside Google</b> <b>Looker Studio. And so that's</b> <b>the, that's the link. And so we're</b> <b>probably gonna speed up because we're</b> <b>almost out of time and we want to make</b> <b>sure we answer any questions that you may</b> <b>have. So do you want to go over</b> <b>the case study and by the</b> <b>way, I am actually pretty excited.</b> <b>So we actually want the the</b> <b>Case Silver award</b> <b>for for the case.</b> <b>People of Excellence Award for our</b> <b>website redesign. So you want to go over</b> <b>that?Yeah, super quick. I</b> <b>guess there's like kind of talks on its</b> <b>own with the numbers. So everything</b> <b>that we talked about, we applied it to</b> <b>this. So we went through a redesign</b> <b>process for our main website for</b> <b>main institution and it was more about</b> <b>doing that recruitment focus right side</b> <b>versus having an informational site.</b> <b>So you guys can go to triplew</b> <b>utrgv. edu to kind of see it live. But</b> <b>these are just some numbers. I mean the</b> <b>expectations that we had about the</b> <b>changes, we had positive</b> <b>expectations, but this kind of like broke</b> <b>our own ceiling. And when above</b> <b>and beyond, 98%</b> <b>higher on page views</b> <b>, 59% higher in search engine</b> <b>results, form submission,</b> <b>what's 105% higher. So this is just part of what using web analytics can do for you, right?</b> <b>And</b> <b>thenhere we can share. The</b> <b>presentation later, but the next slides,</b> <b>I'm going to skip them, but they are</b> <b>pretty much just tips, tips</b> <b>about how to increase conversions</b> <b>and then takeaways, maybe</b> <b>just different strategies that we put</b> <b>together, a few pointers and</b> <b>there's like tumor slides about our best</b> <b>practices that you guys can go through</b> <b>just so that you guys can have a little</b> <b>bit extra from there.</b> <b>Awesome. Thank you so much. Alex and</b> <b>Perla. We just have a few questions</b> <b>and so I'll go ahead and jump in. Our</b> <b>first question is, what are your</b> <b>impressions of Google's update to G4?</b> <b>It's it's interesting and it</b> <b>it is, it is better for sure. For sure.</b> <b>For sure. It's 1000 timesbetter. The</b> <b>issue is it's also 1000 timesmore</b> <b>complicated. And so it does</b> <b>require you to hire somebody then it's</b> <b>literally going to have fun with the data</b> <b>because otherwise it is a pain</b> <b>to go through that. You need to find</b> <b>somebody that can get excited in your</b> <b>team about exploring and</b> <b>be awake in the middle of the night.</b> <b>Trying to figure out what a metric is</b> <b>doing because that's the only way you're</b> <b>gonna be able to fully utilize it to the</b> <b>full potential. There is a</b> <b>few walkthroughs and tutorials and all of</b> <b>that, but honestly I think that at this</b> <b>point we all are discovering how</b> <b>to use it. Universal</b> <b>Analytics was here for so long then it it</b> <b>really got ingrained into into our</b> <b>mindset before, but now we just</b> <b>need to switch and think about everything</b> <b>as an event. Look, I mean guys look</b> <b>for blogs or</b> <b>maybe groups in Slack or</b> <b>something. I don't have one specific out</b> <b>of the top of my head, but I know I look</b> <b>a lot online just to see what people are</b> <b>doing, how people are experiencing</b> <b>analytics as well. But I agree with Alex,</b> <b>I think it's infinitely way better.</b> <b>You need to learn it right? But it's</b> <b>infinitely way better.</b> <b>With the majority of online data being</b> <b>anonymous, how would you identify with</b> <b>them? Graphic groups? i.e. perspective?</b> <b>Students? It's not anonymous</b> <b>And and that's the thing Google uses</b> <b>something called for Google Analytics for</b> <b>Google uses something called Google</b> <b>Signals. And so in the past if</b> <b>you access the website, the</b> <b>university website from a mobile device</b> <b>and then later on you access it from a</b> <b>desktop device, Google generally wasn't</b> <b>able to recognize you as a unique user.</b> <b>But rather, we'll count you as two</b> <b>visitors now with Google</b> <b>signals. It basically is</b> <b>tracking everything if you ever</b> <b>wonder. I was just thinking about</b> <b>that. Why am I seeing an ad about</b> <b>something? I was just thinking about it</b> <b>because Google Now understands you</b> <b>probably better than what you understand</b> <b>yourself. And because of</b> <b>that Google is able to to match your</b> <b>data, your behavioral profile and and</b> <b>assign you I guess that unique person</b> <b>ID inside their massive database. And</b> <b>this is actually. Distributed database.</b> <b>So it's multiple data points. And so</b> <b>that's how they're able to provide you</b> <b>with that. There are few people that are</b> <b>still going in the full Incognito role.</b> <b>And yes, of course you're not going to be</b> <b>able to fully catch one of those, but</b> <b>they will have to be using a VPN,</b> <b>Incognito in a completely isolated</b> <b>environment and they will have to recycle</b> <b>that VPN because otherwise we will</b> <b>still be able to track who you are.</b> <b>Thank you. And then the last question is</b> <b>what is AB testing?So</b> <b>any testing is when you, OK</b> <b>probably you go ahead, right?</b> <b>So it's it's very, it's a lot of</b> <b>fun actually. So AB testing is pretty</b> <b>much just trying to put something out</b> <b>there. And you know, it's pretty</b> <b>much like an exam, putting it out to</b> <b>different users and seeing if it's work,</b> <b>if it's engaging, whether that is</b> <b>colors, whether that is content, whether</b> <b>if it's an image, whether if it's a</b> <b>video, whether if it's an engagement,</b> <b>like a button. All of that is</b> <b>testing. The reason why we call it AB</b> <b>testing is because usually we can have</b> <b>two different variations</b> <b>of it. So let's say that you have a</b> <b>section on your site that has</b> <b>an image of a faculty with content</b> <b>and a green button. And then you</b> <b>also can with your web</b> <b>developers can create a new variation</b> <b>of it where there is an image of students</b> <b>you know saying content and the same</b> <b>green button. These can be</b> <b>targeted to very specific audiences.</b> <b>When your side, when somebody comes into</b> <b>your side and says, oh, this person</b> <b>is a. Maybe from the</b> <b>ages of that that you know</b> <b>versus this other person is from ages</b> <b>BLOB, you know C&B.</b> <b>So when this happens, your</b> <b>site can actually change and target and</b> <b>send out those two variations to</b> <b>those different people and that is</b> <b>testing and in two different audiences.</b> <b>So the reason why we call it AB testing</b> <b>because eventually you get all these</b> <b>different variations that you can do, put</b> <b>it out there, get measurements out of it,</b> <b>collect the data and see what is actually</b> <b>working. So if you're trying to really</b> <b>target an audience that is 18 to</b> <b>26. And you are getting</b> <b>audiences and engagement for that button</b> <b>that is people from 46 to</b> <b>56. There's a problem,</b> <b>right? This is not the correct audience.</b> <b>And then you need to rethink what is in</b> <b>that content that's engaging those people</b> <b>and what isn't that content that is not</b> <b>so. This is why AB testing comes alive</b> <b>and says okay, This option is actually</b> <b>being successful. This option is not</b> <b>being successful. You need to make a</b> <b>decision. Do you want to highlight the</b> <b>faculty? Do you want to highlight the</b> <b>student? Which one is your</b> <b>successful test?Yeah,</b> <b>defend your audiences. That's one of the</b> <b>things that we need to do when we're</b> <b>creating these, these reports and this</b> <b>analysis. Who is your intended audience?</b> <b>Define it first and then defend it. So if</b> <b>your intended audience is potential</b> <b>undergraduate students for this website,</b> <b>it doesn't matter what somebody who is</b> <b>60 year old thinking and already with</b> <b>a PhD thinks about it. What matters is</b> <b>what works. And so that's what what</b> <b>analytics allows you to do and you're</b> <b>going. And you're, yeah, you're you're</b> <b>conversion tracking goals, your</b> <b>conversion goals, umm, I</b> <b>do want to mention if you have any</b> <b>questions, I know that it's a little bit</b> <b>Russian, We already are our time, but we</b> <b>do have an e-mail is webstrategy@</b> <b>utrgv. edu is in the slides.</b> <b>So if you have any questions, if you need</b> <b>help, we're a public institution. We're</b> <b>not really competing with anybody. So we</b> <b>are all colleagues here. So if you have</b> <b>any issues, we're more than happy</b> <b>to. To help in any way we can.</b> <b>Awesome. Thank you both so much. Just</b> <b>for taking the time out to share this</b> <b>knowledge with us. Thank you attendees</b> <b>for joining. If you haven't done so,</b> <b>please complete the session evaluations</b> <b>before you leave, but you can now return</b> <b>to the agenda for your next session. Thank</b> <b>you so much for coming. Awesome.</b> <b>Thank you guys. Thank you everybody.</b>
Video Summary
In this video, Alex Garrido and Perla Pequeno discuss the use of web analytics to uncover recruitment gaps and increase conversion. They explain the importance of using web analytics to track and analyze data in order to improve recruitment efforts. They provide an overview of various web analytics tools, including Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Facebook Insights. They emphasize the need for collaboration among departments and the sharing of data to drive meaningful insights. They also discuss the key metrics to look for in web analytics reports, such as views, visits, user engagement, and clicks. The presenters emphasize the importance of a holistic approach to understanding metrics and the value of AB testing and optimizing web pages. They also share a case study of a successful website redesign that resulted in increased page views, higher search engine results, and more form submissions.
Asset Caption
CASE Career Level: 2
CASE Competencies: Strategic Thinking, Business and Financial Acumen
Keywords
web analytics
recruitment gaps
conversion
data analysis
web analytics tools
collaboration
key metrics
website redesign
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