Module 3: Week 5

It's apparent that many organizations from all types of industries have been doing their homework with respect to the internet and web usage trends of consumers. In retrospect, it's actually pretty impressive that we have the tools and techniques available to analyze and understand the way our targeted consumers use web resources. After all, web-access may not even be completely ubiquitous in our own country. Where I work and live (in SW Montana), there is still a decent portion of the population that could be considered non-Internet using.

According to a Pew Research Center survey (February 27, 2014), 87% of Americans are considered Internet users. This combined with the age of the publicly accessible Internet being only 25 years, our ability to perform useful analysis on usage is actually pretty amazing. This is especially true when you consider that the 90s and early 2000s were really just the introduction to the Internet "with training wheels" for many Americans via AOL and CompuServe. So looking at internet usage as being a primary means for conducting marketing efforts, communication efforts, sales efforts, collaboration and social interaction (although AOL did provide this), the industry may really only be 10 to 15 years old.

The point is really that compared to other industries, it appears that the methods for analyzing web-interaction and usage have advanced as quickly as web-technology itself. This is amazing.

After digging into to this week's materials and assignment, it became clear however, that just because we have tools available, not everyone is ready to realize the power that can be had by using them properly. For my assignment, I chose to use my employer, the University of Montana's web-site. I requested access to our Google Analytics account, and quickly realized how ineffective we are at arming ourselves with information harvested from such a tool.

Interestingly, the Google Analytics account is "owned" by my organization (Central I.T.), but there are users created for the Assistant VP for Marketing, Admissions and others. After reading the lectures and the supporting materials on Web Analytics, it was pretty clear almost right away that nobody at UM understands the data or tools well enough to realize the potential or value.

There were two things that bothered me the most about how UM isn't properly leveraging the power of Google Analytics. First, there are zero goals created. Thus, looking at how well the site is helping achieve them is futile. Second, there is no data on search. UM uses Google Custom Search as the search engine for the site, but no effort has been put into tracking how it is used. I'm not a marketing expert myself, but to me it sure seems that knowing what people search for would be useful.

The takeaway is that I was really hoping to gain some insight into how a university that has Google Analytics in its portfolio would be using it to acquire meaningful information about their targeted demographics. Sure, there is access to all of the traditional web-analytics like, unique visits, bounce rates, etc. but I was hoping to see goals, search terms-- the things that make up the "why." For a school struggling to attract students, it seems that the "why" may be the most important measurement of all.