<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>

web analytics

recruitment gaps

conversion

data analysis

web analytics tools

collaboration

key metrics

website redesign