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Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations October 23rd, 2015 Presented By: Everett Ackerman, Brendan Grahn, Page Hallock, Allie Hanson, Scott Kliczewski, Sam McCarthy, Hadley Priebe, Khalid Rizvi, Dan Rotondi, and Todd Steiner
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Page 1: Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations · Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations October 23rd, 2015 Presented By: Everett Ackerman, Brendan Grahn,

Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations

October 23rd, 2015

Presented By:

Everett Ackerman, Brendan Grahn, Page Hallock, Allie Hanson, Scott Kliczewski, Sam McCarthy, Hadley Priebe, Khalid Rizvi, Dan Rotondi, and Todd Steiner

Page 2: Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations · Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations October 23rd, 2015 Presented By: Everett Ackerman, Brendan Grahn,

Table of Contents Undergraduate Research

External Research and Data Internal Data

Demographics Sessions

Year to Year Comparison Mobile On The Rise

User Flow / Bounce Rate Event / Goal Completion

Graduate Research External Research and Data Internal Data

Demographics Age of Prospective Graduate Students Gender of Graduate Students Operating System

Sessions Mobile On The Rise

User Flow Desktop and Tablet Mobile

Goal Completion Continuing Professional Studies (CPS)

Internal Data Demographics Sessions User Flow / Bounce Rate Event / Goal Completion

Recommendations Site Search Mobile Site Search Survey Mobile Optimization

Undergraduate Graduate Continuing Professional Studies

Next Steps Admissions Application MyEmma Email Google Analytics Connection Tracking Social Media Influence

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Page 3: Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations · Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations October 23rd, 2015 Presented By: Everett Ackerman, Brendan Grahn,

Introduction

The rise in use of mobile devices in nearly every facet of life is becoming ever more apparent. Mobility of information has become as much of a necessity in the current age, as the discovery of fire was to the caveman and the dawn of mankind. We live in a period where more students, no matter their age, are choosing to attend higher education facilities than ever before. These students are using mobile devices to search and apply to colleges. This creates a serious conundrum for universities and colleges on how to adapt to this technological evolution that is affecting the application process for higher education. Prospective students are demanding easier access for requesting more information about the college or university, scheduling visits and applying to their favorite schools.

After carefully calculated research from an external and internal view of Champlain College’s prospective students which include undergraduates, graduates and continuing professional studies, recommendations have been formulated based upon our research that should help prospective students become more interested in applying to Champlain and improve the overall digital marketing of Champlain.

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Page 4: Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations · Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations October 23rd, 2015 Presented By: Everett Ackerman, Brendan Grahn,

Undergraduate Research

External Research and Data

Mobile use in adults and teenagers has risen significantly. According to the Pew Research Center, mobile device traffic is becoming larger in the teen sector as smartphones become more prevalent. In 2015 a Pew Research survey indicated that 91% of all teens use a mobile devices exclusively, such as a cell phone, to use the Internet (Geyer). Teens from homes earning more than $30,000 a year spend more time on the Internet through a mobile device (Lenhart). A 2012 Noel­Levitz study indicated that at least 4 in 5 prospective college students currently in high school have viewed a prospective college website on a mobile device (Selfies, Snapchat, So What?). This can only indicate that when the amount of students that have access to a mobile device increase, the amount of students viewing a college website through a mobile device will increase.

When it comes to social media, high school students are not really following the schools

they want to attend. Most of the time prospective students are following schools whose sports teams they like. It is difficult to target content to specific audiences on large platforms (How).

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https://omniupdate.com/_resources/pdfs/research/2012_mobile.pdf

When searching for a college, prospective students have many tools at their disposal.

This can make the search both easier and harder. Since there are many different platforms for a student to search from, information can get lost or forgotten. It is important for Champlain College to understand how prospective students are finding information about the school.

79% of young adults between eighteen and twenty­four year old own smartphones, according to Nielson (Ring). The use of smartphones has penetrated many aspects of teen lives.

There has been a 30% increase in mobile device use since 2012 according to Cappax. The trend in using mobile devices is continuing to grow.

In 2012, Cappax did a focus group of college bound teenagers and found that most students will read the majority of their email, do quick fact checking and connect to social media on their phone. Students often respond to email on their home computer, but monitor their email through their phone. This led Cappax to make the recommendation to all colleges in general to create a mobile website for prospective students (The Increasing).

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(7 Admission Marketing Trends 2013­2014)

While prospective students are important to look at while making decisions for a college

website, an even greater demographic factor to examine is prospective parents. Prospective parents have the purchasing power for their children, for a large majority of prospective students their parents will be largely aiding them in school payment. When looking for a school 28% of prospective parents said they exclusively use mobile devices as a means to the Internet. When it comes to browsing the college website 45% of prospective parents use a mobile device. This information was retrieved from a Noel­Levitz study. (Greyer)

The question then becomes what kind of information to include in the mobile website. Prospective students and parents do not need to access everything on the website from their phone. In the most recent study done by Cappax, the key pages prospective students look at include:

Academic information and Majors Admissions Facts Scholarship Estimators Campus Life and Application Pages (7 Admission Marketing Trends).

Additionally, students would like to be notified of deadline reminders and take virtual

tours of the school. The virtual tour is really important, especially for students who might not be able to visit the school. The virtual tour would ideally have videos made by current students at the school to show different viewpoints (7 Admissions Marketing Trends).

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Page 7: Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations · Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations October 23rd, 2015 Presented By: Everett Ackerman, Brendan Grahn,

(The Increasing Impact of Mobile Trends on College Admissions in 2012)

Internal Data

Demographics

The demographics of undergraduate students looking at the Champlain College website are pretty simple. By using Google Analytics web data during the time period of Sep 11th 2014 to Sept 11th 2015, we discovered that a majority of the prospective undergraduate students are high school graduates or transfer students from other colleges so the ages range from 18 to 24. The mix of genders is pretty even with 55% males and 45% females. These students mostly come from the Northeast with the most popular being Vermont, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, and New Hampshire. The other more popular states include California, Pennsylvania, Texas and Florida. So using these statistics the typical undergraduate student looking at Champlain would be from the Northeast with a high school degree.

In the screenshots below you can see the difference between 2013­2014 and 2014­2015 concerning age and gender for viewers of Champlain’s website. The changes aren’t too large but they prove the analysis points made above.

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Sessions

Year to Year Comparison The last two years of data for the Champlain College website show that it is extremely clear that the influence of mobile use is rising. In a comparison of the last two years, from October 14, 2013 ­ October 14, 2014 and October 15, 2014 ­ October 15, 2015 the effects of mobile use compared to that of desktop use are surprising. A rise in mobile traffic of 39.31% compared to that of a decrease in traffic of ­14.68% on desktop for undergraduate students aged 18­24 is a clear indication that the mobile wave has taken over.

Mobile On The Rise We are seeing the greatest accessibility of mobile usage among high schoolers as well.

A Pew research center study claims that “92% of teens report going online daily including 24% who say they go online “almost constantly” and “More than half (56%) of teens defined in this report as those ages 13 to 17 go online several times a day.” (8) That’s where the application of mobile websites will be the cornerstone of the modern application process. Currently, Champlain College has failed to introduce a site formatted for mobile devices that evokes a drive from students to look beyond the main site page, or a given landing page. Currently, landing pages defined by Champlain College receive 56.01% of total views coming from a mobile device. Yet, on average 53.59% of those visits are ultimately bounced compared to a 39.37% bounce rate from the desktop site.

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From what we discovered during our research, a large percentage of students who visit the school ultimately apply. A web page within the Champlain site that gives out information to students on visits receives a roughly 51% bounce rate on mobile compared to a 38% bounce rate the desktop version. Not only that, but about 20% more students ( 61% on mobile compared to 42% on desktop) are likely to exit the Champlain College website completely on mobile than they are on the desktop compatible version. These numbers do not indicate the mobile site as being an unneeded entity, but one that is horribly missed used. The differences of a mobile site compared to a desktop version are simple. Smaller screen size leads to less maneuverability on a site. It is imperative that the mobile site be purposely built for ease of use. Over the last year, the Champlain College mobile site has seen a 159.14% increase in mobile sessions as opposed to a 58.15% increase in desktop usage among students 18­24. What makes this statistic alarming is that the mobile site has also seen an average bounce rate of 56.05% on any given page, about 14% more than that of a desktop viewing. Theses numbers are considerably alarming considering a study done by online textbook renter Chegg.com. The study claims that “4 out of 5 students visit college websites on a mobile device, with one­third of those students submitting a college application.” (16) The current rate of mobile viewing on the Champlain College website indicates high growth rates year to year. If students continue to use their mobile devices more nationally, the numbers we see now are likely to increase.

User Flow / Bounce Rate

Unfortunately the bounce rate for many champlain college web pages is quite high. We know that the percentage of students that visit the campus will more than likely attend the school in the fall. The bounce rate on the web page for visits and events is abnormally high, as is the webpage for majors and specializations. These numbers point to the fact that students are not spending anytime further exploring the site once they have viewed one page. Students will either drop out of the home page on mobile devices early, or be directed to a landing page from an email and not do any more searching. It is imperative that champlain college make their web design proactive. Students should be visiting the home page or any landing page and continue to search and explore the site beyond a first glance. Bounce rates for top 4 pages on Champlain College website:

Sessions among students 18­24. 159.14% increase in mobile sessions

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Page 12: Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations · Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations October 23rd, 2015 Presented By: Everett Ackerman, Brendan Grahn,

58.15% increase in desktop

Web Page Home Page Undergraduate Admissions

Financial Aid / Cost of

Admissions

Visits and Events

Mobile Bounce Rate

51% 32% 65% 50%

Tablet / Desktop Bounce Rate

33% 19% 68% 38%

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Page 13: Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations · Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations October 23rd, 2015 Presented By: Everett Ackerman, Brendan Grahn,

Event / Goal Completion

Measuring the goals of a digital campaign are the most important factors to analyze. These goals track how successful the campaign was and where the weakest links of the campaign were. Some of the goals set up on the Google Analytics page include:

Getting prospective students to sign up for an Admissions visit or event Apply to Champlain Request more information about Champlain Have students view the early decision application process and complete it Visit the Undergraduate Admissions page.

The rate at which these goals were completed within the website is the goal completion

rate. After viewing the completion rate of these goals, we had a better understanding of how prospective students were using our site. We analyzed the completion rate for these goals in normal ‘All Sessions’ and ‘Mobile Traffic’ to see the usage of mobile compared to desktop. The completion rate, during the time period of Sept 11th, 2014 through Sept 11th, 2015, is as follows:

Goal Visits and Events

Completing Application

Requesting Information

Early Decision Applicants

Undergraduate Admissions Visits

All Sessions 26% 19% 14% 11% 5%

Mobile 32% 14% 5% 4% 8%

As you can see, the Visits and Events and Undergraduate Admissions Visits, the goal completion rate was higher for mobile than normal sessions. However, for other goals such as applying, requesting information, and early decision applicants, normal sessions were completed at a higher rate. Applying had a fairly close completion rate for normal sessions compared to mobile; therefore if a new mobile site was to be implemented with easier access to the goals above we believe it would significantly increase the success of Champlain’s digital marketing.

After examining both internal and external data in regards to undergraduate studies there is one important recommendation to be made for the client. With a rise in mobile usage for prospective college students nationally and a growth year over year internally for mobile usage the client must focus on mobile optimization. With more undergraduate viewers flocking to the website via mobile, the mobile site needs to be as strong if not stronger due to steady growth as the desktop version of the site.

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Page 14: Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations · Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations October 23rd, 2015 Presented By: Everett Ackerman, Brendan Grahn,

Graduate Research

External Research and Data To better mirror consumer behavior, adjustments to our user experience when

interacting with the graduate section of our website should be made. This would create a more streamlined user flow down the marketing funnel towards macro­conversions, in our case this would be graduate applications. We looked at various articles that tracked these behaviors of prospective graduate students looking to apply to grad school.

According to an annual report from Council of Graduate Schools “2014 was a record­setting year in terms of applications, offers of admission, and first­time graduate enrollment.” Institutions responding to the survey received more than two million applications, extended over 850,000 offers of admission, and enrolled nearly 480,000 incoming,first­time graduate students in the fall semester. However, despite these record­setting numbers, total graduate enrollment remained below the peak set in 2009, and increased by only 0.4% since last fall.

This spike in applications and offers of admission, but drop in total enrolment could be the cause of the rising price of graduate school according to Dr. Debra Stewart, president of the Council of Graduate Schools. She states that “Students with no debt are much more likely to go to graduate school,” Stewart said. “The financial situation matters.”

Furthermore according to Giulio Rocca, founder of the website Grad School Heaven and a graduate of Harvard’s business school, the applicant must consider opportunity cost. “Someone who already holds a job should consider wages and benefits, on top of any tuition that has to be paid,” Rocca said. “…So, someone making 60k a year who wants to do a two­year master’s program should factor in 120k in lost wages on top of tuition for those two years.” This is important to understand the consumer's financial situation because the cost of education is constant issue here in the United States.

The Council of Graduate Schools also breaks down the total graduate applications by degree and according to their survey these are the leading fields of study by number of applications at the master’s/other level:

Business received the largest at (241,635)

Engineering (221,903) In terms of acceptance rates:

Mathematics and Computer Sciences (36.9%)

Physical and Earth Sciences (38.1%)

Arts and Humanities (38.7%)

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Page 15: Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations · Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations October 23rd, 2015 Presented By: Everett Ackerman, Brendan Grahn,

Health Sciences (39.2%) Engineering (39.3%)

These are the degree programs that are getting the most attention in external studies. As for student demographics they found that “about 58% of all first­time graduate

students in fall 2014 were women and marked the sixth consecutive year in which they earned the majority of doctoral degrees.” Women earned:

65.9% of the graduate certificates awarded in 2013­14 59.0% of the master’s degrees 52.2% of the doctorates.

The majority of graduate degrees and certificates awarded to women were in: Arts and Humanities Biological and Agricultural Sciences Education Health Sciences Public Administration and Services Social and Behavioral Sciences

This clearly shows a rise in female graduate students and it can be inferred that this trend will continue to rise.

As for mobile use the largest segment of smartphone owners are between the ages of 18­34. In the second­quarter 2014, 85% of this group aged 18­24 own devices and 86% aged 25­34 own them, an increase from 77% and 80%, respectively, in second­quarter 2013, according to an article by nielsen.com. Furthermore men and women in the U.S. own smartphones almost equally, with 70% of men and 72% of women as of the second­quarter 2014. With such a large segment of the population using smartphones it is an ever growing market that deserves attention. According to research done by Smart Insights, Mobile digital media time in the US is now significantly higher at 51% compared to desktop (42%) (See below)

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Page 16: Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations · Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations October 23rd, 2015 Presented By: Everett Ackerman, Brendan Grahn,

Internal Data

Demographics

Champlain’s prospective graduate students are a very different demographic than traditional prospective students and prospective CPS students. They interact with Desktop/Tablets and Mobile differently than traditional prospective students and CPS students. The reports that are relevant to see the demographics of Champlain’s prospective graduate students are based on sessions on the Master’s Degree and Graduate Certificates page on Champlain’s website. By segmenting the data between Tablet/Desktop and Mobile, it’s easy to see data about prospective graduates and how they use each device.

Age of Prospective Graduate Students The first report to look at when examining the demographic data of Champlain’s

prospective graduate students is the chart that expresses the age ranges of grad students. The chart below shows that on average, Champlain College graduate students are:

Majority are 25­34 years of age for both desktop and mobile. Account for 32.48% of sessions on the Master’s Degree and Graduate

Certificates page for desktops/tablets and 27.16% for mobile. Second largest age group are 35­44 year olds Straight out of undergraduate program ~ 25 years of age

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Page 17: Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations · Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations October 23rd, 2015 Presented By: Everett Ackerman, Brendan Grahn,

The following graphs not only capture the age of Champlain’s graduate students, but they also compare sessions on the Master’s Degree and Graduate Certificates page for desktops/tablets and mobile for the 2013 and 2014. The first chart shows desktop and tablet sessions on the page for 2013 (green) and 2014 (blue). The second chart shows mobile sessions on the page for 2013 (purple) and 2014 (orange). This chart also shows that overall, the biggest age range was 25­34 for both years. However, for mobile in 2014, users in other age ranges have visited the Master’s Degree and Graduate Certificates page more than they did the previous year. The chart also shows that the number of desktop/tablet sessions dropped 10.45% and the number of mobile sessions rose 10.45%.

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Gender of Graduate Students

Another demographic of graduate students to look at is gender. Champlain would benefit from data about how identifying males and female graduate students interact with the Master’s Degree and Graduate Certificates page on desktop/tablets and mobile devices. The charts below on the left show that in 2013, 56.6% of desktop/tablet sessions on the Master’s Degree and Graduate Certificates page are female users and 43.4% are male users. In 2014, 55.4% of desktop/tablet sessions on the Master’s Degree and Graduate Certificates page are female users and 44.6% are male users. The charts below on the right show that in 2013, 66.1% of mobile sessions on the Master’s Degree and Graduate Certificates page are female users and 33.9% are male users. In 2014, 56.2% of mobile sessions on the Master’s Degree and Graduate Certificates page are female users and 43.8% are male users.

This data shows that females visit the Master’s Degree and Graduate Certificates page

more on both desktop/tablets and mobile devices than males. However, 9.9% more males have visited the Master’s Degree and Graduate Certificates page on mobile devices in 2014 compared to 2013.

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Operating System Seeing which operating system Champlain’s prospective graduate students are using

shows a little more insight into how they are accessing the website and by which device. Below is a snapshot of the user flow page for the Master’s Degree and Graduate Certificates page, which has been segmented by operating system. Desktop OS It shows that Windows is the most used operating system with 31,000 sessions between 2013 and 2014. Windows increased sessions by 92% since last year. Macintosh desktop OS increased by 5,000 sessions between 2013 and 2014. (2013 data visible by hovering over each os section in GA) However, desktop/tablet use did not increase between 2013 and 2014. The increase in sessions for Windows and Mac operating systems is due to users shifting from other desktop operating systems. Mobile OS iOS, Apple’s mobile OS, increased by 2,800 sessions between 2013 and 2014. Android, Apple’s biggest mobile OS competitor, grew by 4,000 sessions between 2013 and 2014. Those were the most commonly used operating systems by Champlain’s prospective graduate students. The increase in sessions for mobile is in fact due to an overall increase in graduate students using mobile which is expressed in the number of sessions for desktop/tablet and mobile.

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Page 21: Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations · Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations October 23rd, 2015 Presented By: Everett Ackerman, Brendan Grahn,

Sessions

Mobile On The Rise

When looking at the Google analytics data for the Graduate section of Champlain.edu we can segment the data to reflect this past year to the previous year, then divide it by mobile users and tablet and desktop users.

Mobile Traffic

Tablet & Desktop Traffic

Here we can clearly see that the change of total number of sessions has changed by 10.45% in favor of the mobile platform from 2013­14 to 2014­15 calendar year. This is an increase from 9,706 mobile sessions of 60,072 total sessions in 2013­14, to 35,404 mobile sessions of 133,061 total sessions in 2014­15. Change in New Users

As for new users during the same time period we can see a slight increase in the

summer months of 2014­15.It is to be noted that the spike in late July can be attributed to

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outliers from the incorrect collection of data during that time period (see below). However we can see a spike in new users after Champlain College announced that it has formed an alliance with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to bring its online programs to the Federal government's more than two million employees.

Notations

Of the 38,567 total new users of 2014­15, 29.7% or 11,455 users are accessing the site

via mobile. It can be reasoned that this trend in mobile use will only continue to rise. It is important that Champlain use this data to put more attention towards their mobile graduate information that is easily accessible on their mobile site.

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Page 23: Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations · Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations October 23rd, 2015 Presented By: Everett Ackerman, Brendan Grahn,

User Flow

Desktop and Tablet The screenshot below is of the user flow through the top five pages with the most

sessions on Champlain’s website by prospective graduate students on desktops and tablets from October 13th, 2014 to October 13th, 2015. With the exception of the early childhood education master’s program page all of the pages with the most sessions on desktop are general information pages. These pages such as the master degree page, the major and specialization page, the general academics page, and the admissions page all show people are searching for general information about Champlain College on desktop.

Mobile

The top five most viewed pages for mobile by graduate students on the other hand show a different story. With the exception of the general master’s degree page, the most viewed pages for those using mobile devices show a more specified approach to the use of Champlain’s website. With pages such as the early childhood education master’s page, the mediation master’s page, the positive organization development graduate certificate page, and the law master’s page all show that graduate students are using mobile to find exact program which interests them.

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Although looking at the user flow through Champlain’s website for this past year does

reveal much, adding in the user flow data from the previous year reveals even more. Although the three pages with the most sessions remained the same over the two years for graduate desktop use, the pages with the fourth and fifth most amount of sessions did change. The two pages that were in the top five two years ago that are no longer for this year include; the health care administration master’s page and the fine arts master’s page. The dip in sessions on these two pages could come from multiple factors such as the college scaling the program back. Looking back the user flow of graduate studies on mobile to the previous year and comparing it with this year one can see that there was a change in three of the five pages with the most sessions. From 2013 to 2014 the pages with the third, fourth, and fifth most sessions by graduate students on mobile devices were the conflict studies master’s page, the forensic science master’s page, and the fine arts master’s page. The drastic decrease in the overall sessions in combination with an average drop­off rate of 83.3% shows that these pages may need to be better optimized for mobile use.

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One key statistic that does stand out when comparing the pages with the most sessions for desktop and mobile is the drop­off rate. The average drop­off rate for the five pages with the most sessions by graduate students using desktop is 54.3%. When we look at average drop­off rate for the five pages with the most sessions on mobile we see it is 80.5% almost 30 percentage points than desktop.

Although the use cases may differ on desktop compared to mobile this drastic increase in drop­off rate for mobile use shows that graduate students are having trouble finding what they are looking for while on a mobile device. The drop­off rates of 99.1% on the positive organization development graduate certificate page and 100% on the mediation master pages clearly shows steps need to be taken to optimize these two pages for mobile use.

When looking at user flow through a website it is important to not only take into account the starting page but also the pages with the second and third interactions so that one can begin to understand the behavior of the site’s users. When looking at desktop use all of the starting pages in the traffic flow of a total of 81K sessions. Looking at the flow of users to the second interaction pages, we can see they have a total of 31K sessions. This change from 81K to 31K signifies almost 50K undergrads dropping­off the first page they enter on the website. Looking at mobile the change from starting page to second interaction shows a change of 31K down to 5.1K or 26K drop­offs. Across the board we can see that on average a higher percentage of graduate students are dropping­off the first page they visit on Champlain’s website.

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Page 26: Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations · Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations October 23rd, 2015 Presented By: Everett Ackerman, Brendan Grahn,

Goal Completion

Goal completion is another key metric when looking at the overall successfulness of a website. When looking at Champlain College’s goal completion rates over one year can see that in goal completion percentage, mobile is lagging behind when compared to desktop for almost every major goal. When looking at the chart below we see that overall from October 2014 to October of 2015 mobile is not only behind in goal completion percentage but also total sessions. Out of the 4,170 sessions on pages which goals would have been converted 87% of the sessions came on desktop use. A large part of the problem with the fall in goal conversion for mobile stems from the lack of sessions. Overall goal conversion for graduate students on desktop is at 4.28% with mobile lagging behind at a rate of 1.94%.

October 2013 ­ October 2014

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October 2014 ­ October 2015

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Page 28: Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations · Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations October 23rd, 2015 Presented By: Everett Ackerman, Brendan Grahn,

Continuing Professional Studies (CPS)

External Research and Data Online degree programs provided by colleges and universities are continuing to gain

more applications from both prospective students and those continuing their professional studies. The current top 15 majors that attracting online students consist of:

In 2014 there were 3.4 million registered online college students enrolled in courses, making up 17% of the college student population. Students will continue to enroll in online courses, it has been projected to go up to 25% by 2020 (Clinefelter, D. L., & Aslanian, C. B. (2015). Online college students 2015: Comprehensive data on demands and preferences. Louisville, KY: The Learning House, Inc. <http://www.learninghouse.com/wp­content/uploads/2015/07/OnlineCollegeStudents2015.pdf>.). The average age for online students enrolled is 34 years old, predominantly female. Majority of students are undergraduates (82%), or graduates (14%), predominantly the students are employed (81%). ("Investigating the Online Student Body ­ OnlineUniversities.com." Articles for Educators. Online Universities, 08 Aug. 2011. Web. 19 Oct. 2015. <http://www.onlineuniversities.com/articles/educators/investigating­the­online­student­body/>.).

The Online College Students 2015: Comprehensive Data on Demands and Preferences found five key takeaways as to why students choose online courses from 1,500 prospective, current, and recently graduated online students.

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1. Students enjoy the diversification of strategies used to reach students in online classes

and marketing tactics.

2. Easy to use admission policies are a necessity for students when they’re applying towards online courses.

3. Affordability is key for students, 45% of students stated that they chose the least

expensive school. The students had also acknowledged that marketing messages that stressed affordability were effective on their decision.

4. 65% of the students had chosen an online program that was within 100 miles of their

home, meaning student are in close proximity of where they’re enrolled.

5. Students expressed an interest in learning online, but also having opportunities on­campus (Clinefelter, D. L., & Aslanian, C. B. (2015). Online college students 2015: Comprehensive data on demands and preferences. Louisville, KY: The Learning House, Inc. <http://www.learninghouse.com/wp­content/uploads/2015/07/OnlineCollegeStudents2015.pdf>).

However, these are not the only factors why people choose to proceed with online

courses. Another reason as to why more and more students are choosing online courses is because of the balance within their life. Online courses allows for students to balance their work, family life, and school responsibilities. This is because they do not have the restriction of being on campus. Having accelerated courses motivates students towards completing their online degree faster. Accessibility is another big issue for online students, being able to access courses at anytime while connected to the internet allows for the ability to allow for students to be in control of studying and completing the course (Smith, Frank D. "Who Is the Average Online College Student? [#Infographic]." Ed Tech: Focus On Higher Education. Ed Tech, May 2014. Web. 19 Oct. 2015. <http://www.edtechmagazine.com/higher/article/2014/05/who­average­online­college­student­infographic>.).

Online courses have been allowing for students with disabilities and military personnel to participate in a higher education towards gaining a degree. There are over 49 million registered U.S. citizens with a disability, making up 16% of our population. Making online courses more accessible allows for more prospective students with disabilities for colleges and universities to gain more applicants. Currently there are 36,772 military members that are enrolled in online courses, but applications are continuing to increase because of the updated G.I. Bill. This revision allows for service members to receive the standard of living, having access towards a higher education ("Investigating the Online Student Body ­ OnlineUniversities.com." Articles for Educators. Online Universities, 08 Aug. 2011. Web. 19 Oct. 2015. <http://www.onlineuniversities.com/articles/educators/investigating­the­online­student­body/>.). These are two of the prospective students that colleges and universities can start marketing towards.

Non­traditional students have been an increasing market for online courses as well. Marketing towards this group can be very unpredictable, since retention can be larger than

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recruitment. Having a proactive outreach towards talking to students is greater than having them come to the college or university, when taking online courses. The best ways to target this market is through social media, digital communities, and administrators at the college. Other ways toward gaining retention can be done through the history or reputation that the school precedes and understand what the value is that students are gaining. With this understanding it allows for colleges and universites to develop a clear message that emphasizes this value (UB Custom Publishing Group. "Marketing Efforts Need to Evolve to Address the Needs of the New 'traditional' Student." Marketing Efforts Need to Evolve to Address the Needs of the New ‘traditional’ Student. University Business Magazine, Jan. 2015. Web. 19 Oct. 2015. <http://www.universitybusiness.com/article/marketing­efforts­need­evolve­address­needs­new­%E2%80%98traditional%E2%80%99­student>.). Having this outreach allows for students to take the step to research the college or university that is targeting towards them.

Majority of students researching for higher online education are using desktops for the initial search all the way to eventually completing an application. While smartphones were found to be used by more than a quarter during their initial search and information gathering. This number had decreased in rate during the application process.

Students who had made first contact with the online colleges they were looking at,

primarily were using desktops as well. With having cell phone usage was towards the bottom of the list.

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While having e­mail and contact by phone being directly after acessing information through the online education provider (Clinefelter, D. L., & Aslanian, C. B. (2015). Online college students 2015: Comprehensive data on demands and preferences. Louisville, KY: The Learning House, Inc. Clinefelter, D. L., & Aslanian, C. B. (2015). Online college students 2015: Comprehensive data on demands and preferences. Louisville, KY: The Learning House, Inc. <http://www.learninghouse.com/wp­content/uploads/2015/07/OnlineCollegeStudents2015.pdf>.).

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Page 32: Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations · Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations October 23rd, 2015 Presented By: Everett Ackerman, Brendan Grahn,

Internal Data

Demographics

With CPS demographics you will notice that the audience is going to be older than

traditional students. Most of these students will be working full time in their careers, with little to no time to attend classes. Making online classes ideal for their continuing education. And, because these students can take online classes offered at Champlain. They don’t have to live near Burlington. Champlain online classes attract those in and around the New England area, even those further away like California and Texas. Age ­ (August 30, 2015 ­ September 29, 2015)

Largest group being students from age 25­34. Nearly ⅓ of all CPS students. These students just finished undergrad or grad school. They’re starting their careers and starting to pay back their student loans.

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Page 33: Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations · Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations October 23rd, 2015 Presented By: Everett Ackerman, Brendan Grahn,

Gender

Statistics show that males and females are both almost even down the line for CPS. Location

These students are all over America. Prominently being from Burlington, and the north east region. Some are from CA and TX.

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Page 34: Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations · Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations October 23rd, 2015 Presented By: Everett Ackerman, Brendan Grahn,

Sessions

Over the past two years Champlain College’s website has been gaining more mobile traffic than desktop and tablet. Between the past few years there has been a 8.03% increase of mobile traffic from online and continuing professional studies students. While there is a 8.03% decrease for tablet and desktop traffic over the past two years. This has shown to be consistent with pageviews on champlain.edu for online students as well. With an increase of 83.9% for mobile and only a 25.29% increase of tablet and desktop pageviews on champlain.edu. These number will only continue to rise as years go on and move into a more digital age. A larger focus should be put on making the site more mobile friendly and engaging students.

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Page 35: Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations · Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations October 23rd, 2015 Presented By: Everett Ackerman, Brendan Grahn,

User Flow / Bounce Rate

Mobile users have the highest percentages on average for bounce rates. But also have

the highest conversion rates. Mobile users (ages:25­34) had more than double the conversion rate than desktop users (ages:25­34). Second highest conversion rate is mobile users

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Page 36: Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations · Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations October 23rd, 2015 Presented By: Everett Ackerman, Brendan Grahn,

(ages:18­24). It’s still hard to tell from this data, exactly why the reason is mobile users have a higher conversion rate. We can assume that younger mobile users know can navigate easily around the website and get less distracted than desktop users.

Statistics show that the overwhelming majority of CPS students who found out about

online classes at Champlain College was through Organic Searches.

Here are the listings of some of the keywords most commonly used to find Champlain College CPS classes. Besides the obvious “Champlain College” search term. There are major specific degree search terms such at “forensic + accounting degree” which is ranked 1st in the

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searches. This shows that Champlain College makes sure to link their majors as keywords for online class searches, so they show up.

The highest used smartphone to search for Champlain College CPS classes, no surprise, The Apple iPhone. Followed by the Apple iPad.

New visitors and returning visitors are very similar in stats. Obviously the New visitors will have a lot more people as they’re looking at the site for the first time. Both parties have almost identical bounce rates, around 44%.

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Page 38: Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations · Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations October 23rd, 2015 Presented By: Everett Ackerman, Brendan Grahn,

Event / Goal Completion

Included in this section are the 3 goals that have been set for the CPS section of analytics. We have tracked the progress of each goal on over the past year and have included screenshots below.

Our main takeaway from the data collected is that goal completion seems to be clustered, at least for 2 of the 3 CPS goals. As expected, activity almost entirely slows down during the summer vacation months. Aside from that, there are about 3 times of the year that show the greatest goal conversions. These times are January to about April or March, April through the start of summer vacation and early September/late August through late fall.

CPS Program Brochure Download (Goal 1)

Oct 13 2014 ­ Oct 13 2015

Here we can see the goal conversion rate for Goal 1, also known as “CPS Program Brochure Download”. This rate seems to very specific to the time of the year. Months January through early June see a great deal of activity, as well as August through late fall. These are the two clusters of activity, with the other months in the year holding a 0% goal conversion rate. This shows that people are starting their process of gathering information during these months because they are taking the first step of many.

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CPS Contact Form Submit (Goal 2)

Oct 13 2014 ­ Oct 13 2015

Just as with Goal 1, Goal 2 follows the same trend in that activity is clustered into January through early june and August through late fall. This could possibly be telling us that in response to the downloading of the CPS information brochure, prospective students are taking the next step promptly and filling out a contact form. Also, they may be left with a lot of questions that require contacting Champlain to be answered.

Offsite Apply Click (Goal 3)

Oct 13 2014 ­ Oct 13 2015

This is a very important goal and this conversion rate shows the percentage of those who applied. The interesting thing about this goal is how the data is much more spread out. People are completing this goal quite literally all year long, except for during the summer. For whatever reason, the traditional college summer vacation sees the lowest goal conversion rates, but as the new school year begins, they highest conversion rate is seen.

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Goal Conversion Rate

Oct 13 2014 ­ Oct 13 2015

This final graph outlines the overall goal conversion rate. The real take away here is exactly what we have been touching upon on each goal and that is the fact that summer vacation sees little or no activity in the avenue of goal completion. Additionally, we can see that august, but particularly October see the highest goal conversion rates. This information provides an excellent timeline that can help illustrate when prospective CPS students are making decisions and completing goals.

An important point to touch upon is the goal conversion rate in relation to browser and

device. Obviously, mobile is not the only platform which prospective CPS students are accessing the site and completing goals, but how does it stack up?

The highest percentage of goal conversions comes from Chrome (Desktop), followed by

Internet Explorer (Desktop), Firefox (Desktop) then two mobile platforms. 9.97% of goal conversions from October 18 2014, through October 18 2015 were made on Safari (Mobile), followed by 8.34% from Chrome (Mobile). Though mobile doesn’t rank among the top three, there is very little difference between the 11.20% of conversions from Firefox (Desktop), showing the great deal of mobile device usage, specifically for completing goals. This is an important piece of information to consider, but never the less it highlights how mobile is definitely on the rise in usage, specifically for completing CPS goals.

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Page 41: Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations · Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations October 23rd, 2015 Presented By: Everett Ackerman, Brendan Grahn,

Recommendations

We would recommend implementing the Google Analytics tool Site Search into Champlain College’s already existing Google Analytics platform. This tool which Champlain has not taken advantage of allows you to see the most search terms within your website. Knowing these terms can help you to better tailor your site to your customer's needs.

We would also recommend that Champlain track site searches. The user search experience for desktop and especially mobile searches needs to be improved. Champlain can do this by learning what prospective students search on desktop and mobile. By learning this they can better optimize the search tool to allow easier navigation around both sites to cater to the needs of prospective students.

Our second recommendation would be to develop a survey to pushes to mobile users of the website to gather data on how they are using the website and if the website is meeting their needs. The survey will help to gather qualitative data to back up our quantitative analytics data. This data can be extremely useful to optimizing pages on the site for mobile use.

Our external research shows that overall mobile use among undergraduate, graduate, and continuing professional studies is on the rise. The Google Analytics data we collected shows that mobile use on Champlain College’s website is on the rise but also still far behind that of perspective students using desktop & tablet devices. To meet the demand of the rising use of mobile devices on the website we are recommending that Champlain College better optimize their site for mobile use

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Page 42: Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations · Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations October 23rd, 2015 Presented By: Everett Ackerman, Brendan Grahn,

Site Search

The first recommendation for Champlain to improve SEO for desktop and mobile website usability, would be to track site search analytics in Champlain’s Google Analytics. Currently, Champlain does not use the site search tracking tool in Google Analytics. It would be very helpful to see what people are searching so that Champlain can aid prospective students with any questions and concerns they have, as well as just see what pages prospective students are trying to find. It will also help Champlain see if prospective students are searching different things on desktop/tablets than they are on mobile. If there is a difference, which we believe there is and we prove this in the mobile optimization sections, then Champlain can make improvements to both their desktop and mobile sites. To track search analytics follow these simple steps:

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Page 43: Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations · Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations October 23rd, 2015 Presented By: Everett Ackerman, Brendan Grahn,

Mobile Site Search

Champlain’s mobile site needs a lot of work. The first time we conducted a mobile search, Champlain’s mobile site search wasn’t even working. However, it seems that the problem was fixed. Mobile site searches need to be tracked in google analytics as well. Mobile usage for prospective students is on the rise from last year. Champlain needs to take advantage of being able to see what prospective students are searching on mobile compared to what they are searching on the desktop site. Once Champlain has the site search data, they can focus on what students are actually searching to see how they should improve their mobile site design. The implementation of mobile site search is a little more complicated than implementing the desktop site search. When the time comes for implementation, Champlain’s marketing team needs to research how they will do this.

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Page 44: Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations · Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations October 23rd, 2015 Presented By: Everett Ackerman, Brendan Grahn,

Survey

We are proposing a user experience survey that will appear on pages of the website with the highest bounce rate. By only having the survey appear on these pages, we will be able to collect data that will help fill in the blanks as to why people are bouncing from the pages so much. On top of this, we will be collecting information about what users are looking for in relation to their area of education (ie Undergrad, Grad or CPS). Survey Questions

1. Select your area of interest a. Undergrad b. Grad c. CPS

2. What were you specifically looking for? a. (Write in answer)

3. Did you find the material you were searching for? a. Yes b. No

i. Why?

(Example of how the survey prompt could appear)

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Page 45: Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations · Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations October 23rd, 2015 Presented By: Everett Ackerman, Brendan Grahn,

The following is the exact criteria of the survey. Appears on pages with the highest bounce rates

CPS /online­masters­programs/med­early­childhood­education (Early Childhood Ed)

84.09% Bounce Rate ­ 704 Sessions (Oct 16 2014 ­ Oct 16 2015) /cyber­security/online­cyber­security­programs (Cyber Security)

64.83% Bounce Rate ­ 509 Sessions (Oct 16 2014 ­ Oct 16 2015) /current­students/academic­information/academic­calendar­online­and­continuing

­professional­studies (Calendar) 93.18% Bounce Rate ­ 337 Sessions (Oct 16 2014 ­ Oct 16 2015)

/online­graduate­certificates/business/positive­organizational­development­certificate (Positive Organizational Development)

89.44% Bounce Rate ­ 294 Sessions (Oct 16 2014 ­ Oct 16 2015) /online­masters­programs/ms­healthcare­administration/admission­requirements

(Healthcare Administration) 93.30% Bounce Rate ­ 224 Sessions (Oct 16 2014 ­ Oct 16 2015)

Only shown on mobile devices 3 Questions

Enough to collect valuable data but not too long that users will lose interest

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Page 46: Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations · Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations October 23rd, 2015 Presented By: Everett Ackerman, Brendan Grahn,

Mobile Optimization

Undergraduate

A study found that when prospective students and prospective parents view a college website they are visiting specific landing pages. The top 3 pages visited are Academic programs, major information and financial aid. The first and most important page, Academic Programs, includes many steps to get to the program that the user is searching for. This can cause major drop off rates, with people not wanting to complete a lot steps to find a simple major specific page.

The next most important and visited page is the Financial Aid page. When a viewer

arrives at the Champlain College homepage there is no direct link to financial aid. When this is the second most viewed page overall on all college websites, it has to be a landing page that is available from the home page. When the user can not find a page they are looking for this causes drop offs. Many drop offs could have been a result of easy accessibility to the financial page.

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When a viewer can not find this page they can resort to the search bar, when a search is

made the site views as a desktop site, not mobile. This is not good when dealing with a mobile site because viewers will drop off if the site is not easy. In regards to mobile optimization the website needs to cater to the top pages visited by prospective students. This does not mean optimizing the most viewed pages on the Champlain website, this mean figuring out what pages the user is looking for and fix the site accordingly.

Graduate

In order to optimize our graduate program pages on the Champlain.edu website we need to first identify which of these pages have the highest drop­off rate. According to Google Analytics three of the pages with some some of the highest amount of sessions with the highest drop­off rates are the early childhood education master’s page, the mediation master’s page, and the Positive Organization Development Graduate Certificate page. One of the key points adding to the large drop­off rate on these pages that first stuck out was the long scroll to complete an action. As seen in the screenshots below in order to get to the download brochure of choose any action under “take the next step” on any of these three pages you must scroll your screen four complete times. Having to scroll four times through a ton of text without a doubt causes some people to drop­off before even having the option to take an action. We also think that having to enter first name, last name, email, phone, and zip code causes people to not even take the action of downloading a brochure. The high drop off­off rates from some of the mobile pages with the most sessions shows that these pages are not ideally optimized.

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Page 48: Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations · Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations October 23rd, 2015 Presented By: Everett Ackerman, Brendan Grahn,

We believe that a small tweak to the way the page is set up could enhance the optimization of the page for mobile users. By putting the buttons to download a brochure at the top of the page instead of the bottom more people would see it right away. Another reason as to why we believe graduate students are dropping off from these mobile pages is that to even start the download for a brochure you must enter your information in five different fields. Typing is not as easy on mobile as it is on desktop and mobile users avoid having to click and type as much as they can. Taking the first name, last name, phone, and zip fields out could help to get more prospective graduate students to download a brochure.

Another recommendation we have would be to reduce the amount of text. Although all the information on these pages is important to the program and important to any prospective graduate student researching the program, the large amount of text creates a need for extra

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Page 49: Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations · Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations October 23rd, 2015 Presented By: Everett Ackerman, Brendan Grahn,

page scrolling. One way of fixing this would be to implement a drop down feature utilized be text heavy websites such as wikipedia. Below is a screenshot of this feature on Wikipedia's Champlain College Page.

This feature allows you to create subsections of information and show just the title of the section. With one simple tap on the screen the subsection expands to to show all of the information within it. With another tap of the section heading the information retracts bringing the user back to the view of just the subsection headings. This feature can be very useful to optimizing Champlain's Site for mobile use as it will not force as much text onto the user as they are navigating the site.

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Page 50: Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations · Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations October 23rd, 2015 Presented By: Everett Ackerman, Brendan Grahn,

Continuing Professional Studies

When it comes to optimizing the mobile experience for those browsing the CPS section on mobile, it is imperative to identify the highest traffic pages first. As expected, the /online page is the one with the highest traffic so it is very important that other pages are as clear and easy to navigate to from here.

As we move down the list to identify the highest traffic mobile pages in the CPS section, we find the transfer credit section, accounting for 1,533 sessions over the past year. Below that we have the digital investigation degree page and then the early childhood education page. As described in the survey recommendation, we are going to be placing the survey on high bounce rate pages including the early childhood education page.

The layout of the degree specific pages appear to be nearly identical, including details about the degree and presenting the option to either Download a Brochure or Request a Free Guide. As described in the graduate suggestions, having to scroll through 4 full pages on a mobile device in order to reach a call to action, likely will lose many people seeking information. A recommendation for this would be to put the request or download information prompt at the top of the page.

Beyond that, the best course of action for refining the mobile experience for CPS users would be to implement the survey and see what the major reasons for the high bounce rates are. From there, we would be able to make specific changes based on their feedback that could perhaps even be utilized across all of the CPS degree specific pages.

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Page 51: Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations · Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations October 23rd, 2015 Presented By: Everett Ackerman, Brendan Grahn,

Next Steps We believe that by completing these recommendations the process of prospective

students viewing and applying to Champlain College will greatly improve. Champlain should look at these possible next steps in the future to see if they would still benefit from them being implemented. These next steps include developing an Admissions application app, a virtual tour app, tracking email marketing through MyEmma in Google Analytics and tracking social media influence/analytics in Google Analytics.

Admissions Application

We believe developing an app for Admissions would be too complex of an undertaking at this time. Once the mobile site has been optimized, it could be an easy way for prospective students to use and apply to Champlain. While at the moment an admissions app isn’t vital, it is a good idea to be implemented in the future like some other higher education facilities are doing. Champlain would could also benefit from having a virtual campus tour apart of the app due to the high conversions physical campus tours create. According to a Chegg University article, screenshot located below, a focus on building a mobile­friendly site with responsive design should be the main goal and afterwards use this to connect to an app. So once the mobile site has been optimized, an app can be developed that helps ease the process of applying to Champlain.

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Page 52: Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations · Digital Marketing Metrics and Analytics Recommendations October 23rd, 2015 Presented By: Everett Ackerman, Brendan Grahn,

MyEmma Email Google Analytics Connection When we were using MyEmma tracking the success of email marketing campaigns we

noticed they weren’t getting sufficient opens and following through to the website. There is also a lack of connection between MyEmma Analytics and Google Analytics, so when prospective students opened an email from Champlain MyEmma tracks the opening and clicks on the email, but then stops tracking. A connection between MyEmma and Google Analytics should be made so ease of tracking users from one to the other. This would give better data on tracking the success of emails and taking users from email to the website’s specific landing page.

Tracking Social Media Influence Along with tracking email marketing analytics more thoroughly, it would be beneficial for Champlain to incorporate social media analytics into Google Analytics. This would allow for Champlain to have a better grasp of whether students are coming from social media to the website and which devices they are using. If Champlain implements these recommendations, their prospective student user experience will improve drastically.

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Works Cited Page

1. "7 Admission Marketing Trends for 2013­2014." Cappax. Cappax. Web. 16 Oct. 2015.

<https://www.cappex.com/media/Cappex7AdmissionMarketingTrends.pdf>

2. "Four New Trends in Digital Analytics." Econsultancy. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Oct. 2015.

3. "Grad School Enrollment Declines...why?" USA TODAY College. N.p., 10 Jan. 2013.

Web. 16 Oct. 2015.

4. "How High­School Students Use Mobile in Their College Search."Uversity Roundtable

Blog. Uversity Connections Matter, 8 Feb. 2012. Web. 16 Oct. 2015.

5. "Investigating the Online Student Body ­ OnlineUniversities.com." Articles for Educators.

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6. "Mobile Marketing Statistics 2015." Smart Insights. N.p., 22 July 2015. Web. 20 Oct.

2015.

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Season." Newswire. Nielson, 29 Oct. 2013. Web. 20 Oct. 2015.

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Cappax. Web. 16 Oct. 2015. <https://www.cappex.com/media/digitalMobile2012.pdf>.

12. "The Mobile Browsing Behaviors and Expectations of College Bound High School

Students." Ruffalo Noel Levitz. Web. 20 Oct. 2015.

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13. "U.S. Graduate Schools Report Slight Growth in New Students for Fall 2012 | Council of

Graduate Schools." U.S. Graduate Schools Report Slight Growth in New Students for

Fall 2012 | Council of Graduate Schools. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Oct. 2015.

14. Allum, Jeff, and Hironao Okahana. Survey of Graduate Enrollment and Degrees. Rep.

CGS/GRE, 2015. Web. 20 Oct. 2015.

<http://cgsnet.org/ckfinder/userfiles/files/E_and_D_2014_report_final.pdf>.

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<https://econsultancy.com/blog/64953­four­new­trends­in­digital­analytics/>.

16. Clinefelter, D. L., & Aslanian, C. B. (2015). Online college students 2015:

Comprehensive data on demands and preferences. Louisville, KY: The Learning House,

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<http://www.learninghouse.com/wp­content/uploads/2015/07/OnlineCollegeStudents201

5.pdf>.

17. Geyer, Stephanie. "Is Your Campus Web Site Ready for Mobile? College­bound

Students Are Researching Colleges via Tablets and Smart Phones ­ Ruffalo Noel Levitz

Blog: Higher Education Enrollment, Student Retention, and Student Success." Ruffalo

Noel Levitz Blog Higher Education Enrollment Student Retention and Student Success

RSS. N.p., 14 Nov. 2012. Web. 20 Oct. 2015.

18. Lenhart, Amanda. "Teens, Social Media & Technology Overview 2015."Pew Research

Center Internet Science Tech RSS. Pew Research Center, 8 Apr. 2015. Web. 19 Oct.

2015. <http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/04/09/teens­social­media­technology­2015/>.

19. Selfies, SnapChat, So What? The 2015 Social Admissions Report. Rep. Chegg Uversity,

2015. Web. 19 Oct. 2015.

20. Smith, Frank D. "Who Is the Average Online College Student? [#Infographic]." Ed Tech:

Focus On Higher Education. Ed Tech, May 2014. Web. 19 Oct. 2015.

<http://www.edtechmagazine.com/higher/article/2014/05/who­average­online­college­stu

dent­infographic>.

21. The Mobile Browsing Behaviors and Expectations of College­Bound HighSchool

Students. an E­Expectations Trend Report. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Web.

22. UB Custom Publishing Group. "Marketing Efforts Need to Evolve to Address the Needs

of the New 'traditional' Student." Marketing Efforts Need to Evolve to Address the Needs

of the New ‘traditional’ Student. University Business Magazine, Jan. 2015. Web. 19 Oct.

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