Recently we decided to give the free version of the Google Analytics tool a shot and are now using it to monitor traffic and activity on the main MU Web site and the Undergraduate Admissions site. I'll have to say, I'm extremely impressed and for someone whose job it is to monitor audience activity and make decisions based on user need, my job just got a whole lot easier.
This tool allows me to see much more clearly where our visitors are coming from, what they're looking at and all sorts of additional information I've never had available before in an easy to read format. It's especially nice when I can take the guesswork out of decisions. For instance, I always thought that if current students, faculty and staff had a very specific area of the site designed for their own purposes, it would become one of the most heavily used areas because they would find it easier to go about their daily work, using it as a resource. Recent statistics show that the #1 hit page on the MU site is, of course, the homepage at www.missouri.edu. The #2 spot is held consistently by the current students gateway page at http://www.missouri.edu/students/. The faculty and staff gateway is also popular, showing up consistently in the top 10. This means that I can, with complete confidence, use these areas as a means of disseminating important information useful to these audiences with the knowledge that they are indeed looking at the page. No more assumptions, it's solid fact.
Another great piece of intelligence is that our visitors are searching for us using these top two terms:
1. University of Missouri
2. Mizzou
I'll provide more of this information occasionally for your reading pleasure. If you're a geek about statistics like I am, you'll find some of this very interesting. For those of us responsible for marketing Mizzou, the information is like pure gold, or should I say "black and gold?"
