Are Higher Education Institutions Making the most of their Web Analytics?

Recently, Karine Joly, a higher education web specialist, wrote an interesting post on her blog, Collegewebeditor.com, recounting the results of a survey she performed last year on the use of web analytics in higher education institutions. We are constantly telling our customers that if they aren’t already using web analytics, they need to get started as quickly as possible, and we think that the results of her study will be very helpful for our higher education readers.

The study found that while web analytics are still, “in their infancy,” within most higher education institutions, they can (and have been proven to) make a big difference for higher education institutions’ interactions on the web and that the reason many institutions are having difficulty implementing web analytics is because of they are more decentralized and have a hard time utilizing one set of best practices.

The study also found that:

• 95% of respondents indicated that web traffic data is tracked at their institution
• 92% of respondents who use web analytics use Google Analytics
• 72% of respondents who use web analytics spend less than 2 hours a week working on it and 70% do not have a dedicated web analyst in their institution

After reading her post on the study, we were shocked (and pleased) to read that 95% of the respondents have web analytics in place in their organization. This was much higher than we anticipated and shows us how far many institutions have come in their attempts at improving their web presences. After reading that wonderful statistic however we were disappointed to read that most of these respondents don’t actually interact with their analytics on a regular basis, and that most don’t have a dedicated web analytics in their institution. 

Especially in large, diverse organizations, frequently and regularly checking and updating your web analytics data is essential for online ROI.  Universities, often being as decentralized and diverse as they are, can benefit hugely from have a dedicated web analytics expert (or even a team) that can help to segment their information down into as many details as possible, and to really keep track of how different areas of universities main website and micro sites are doing. 

If you want to learn more about getting started with web analytics, check out our post on that topic here.

For a more detailed analysis of the survey results you should check out Karine’s post on UniversityBusiness.com

Posted by Amberlie Denny at September 13, 2010 8:00 AM

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