Yesterday, I announced a new website on creating web content. The site, with the fitting and search optimized (if obvious) title of Create Web Content, incorporates materials on content development that we posted on our old website.

Well, on our old website we also had a downloadable guide to web writing. While it was posted, we had literally thousands of downloads. But since it’s no longer our focus, we’ve now made this guide available as a website as well, and called it Write for Websites.

Browse the site for guidance on writing effective web copy, or jump into a section from here:

• Write concise for web readers with a short attention span
• Write to scan so web readers can pick out information they’re after
• Write objectively to avoid having people see your site as spam
• Write with personality in a way that engages readers and builds a relationship
• Write persuasively to drive readers to take the action you want
• Search optimize to raise your search rank (without annoying your readers)
• Update content so people don’t think you’ve gone out of business
• Organize content in a logical, usable way that enhances usability
• Link content to make it more interactive (and further improve SEO)

And if you have thoughts on how we can improve either of the sites, let us know in the comments, by contacting us, or on Twitter.

When we recently made the switch to our new focus, and new website, both guides were lost. They didn’t really have a home in the new structure, and they were kind of distractions. But while they were out of sight (and site), they weren’t out of mind. We’ve used the material regularly, and often thought about republishing the content online.

Well, we finally have. Today we’re quietly announcing that we’ve published the appropriately named Create Web Content as a reference site for anyone who wants to plan, produce and manage content for their website. The site is a huge (easily over 10,000-word) resource on how to create web content, covering such topics as:

• Set objectives so you don’t waste time creating content that doesn’t help you attain your goals
• Find a niche to avoid getting lost in the ocean of online information
• Research your target market to create content that targets their wants, needs and frustrations
• Research keywords to create search-optimized content your audience finds
• Choose a domain name that’s both memorable and search engine friendly
• Review competition to imitate their strengths and exceed their weaknesses
• Find partners to help with content development and promotion
• Design an information architecture that organizes content effectively
• Choose media that’s appropriate for your objectives and market—be it text or video
• Guide style with consistent rules that raise your content’s professionalism
• Plan content so you’re not scrambling at the last minute to produce it
• Process content in an effective step-by-step manner that maximizes resources
• Manage documents efficiently, so you’re not searching for lost files
• Source content to augment original material with existing works
• Convert content from non-web formats to be digitally friendly
• Research your niche to gather information required for content production
• Outline content to provide a framework for writing material
• Write content that both people and search engines love
• Measure content to determine its effectiveness and inform optimization

A lightly ad-supported site, this is hopefully the first in a series that we launch on subjects of interest. The next in line will cover writing for websites, and include material that we’ve created over the past three years on how to write effectively for the web. We hope you enjoy the sites, and look forward to your feedback (which you can feel free to add below).

Adding extra data might seem daunting, but competitive intelligence analysis can be both cheap and easy if you use the right tools, and it’s an essential part of your online marketing strategy in an increasingly sophisticated digital marketplace.

What is competitive intelligence analysis?

In its simplest sense, competitive intelligence analysis is treating the web analytics data of your competition like it’s your own. And though it may be hard to imagine, much of the analytics data you use to optimize your own online efforts, from basic visitor counts to advanced engagement metrics, is available for your closest competitors, and most of it is completely free.

Why is it necessary?

Regardless of which analytics tool you use, traditional web analytics will always be a “silo,” meaning it exists in isolation. You might feel good about your online performance, and you might even see a steady increase every month. But until you understand how well your competitors are performing, as well as how they’re doing it and—most importantly—how it’s affecting you, you’ll never have a true sense of your online success and how it can be improved.

Where does the data come from?

Competitive intelligence data can come from any number of sources, including ISP providers (who maintain detailed records of every user’s online habits), opt-in panels (through which users agree to be monitored), toolbars (which keep tabs on unsuspecting searchers) and self-reported data (usually from sites that want their stats available to potential advertisers).

But no matter where your data comes from you should always be aware of two truths:

1. Every data source has sample biases. There’s no getting around them—all you can do is anticipate them and compare sources for the best picture possible.
2. No competitive intelligence data will ever be 100% accurate. And it doesn’t need to be. Your goal isn’t to pinpoint precise metrics—it’s simply to get a sense of how you hold up to the competition and what you can learn from their tactics.

Is a free tool enough?

If you’re working with a generous budget, you can’t go wrong with a paid tool like Hitwise or comScore, both of which offer incredibly deep competitive analytics insights. But for this post, we’ll look at mining some enterprise-level competitive intelligence using the following free tools, so you can focus your time and effort on analysis.

Alexa

Owned by Amazon, Alexa was one of the first big players in competitive intelligence. It collects data by encouraging users to download its toolbar and then capturing their data as they surf. Alexa is most famous for providing traffic-based website rankings, which were once an important consideration for advertisers deciding where to spend their budget. Think of Alexa as a popularity contest for websites.

Above is a simple example of what Alexa’s best known for. Search for stats on the Toronto Star website, and you’ll see that in terms of traffic, thestar.com generally ranks somewhere above 2,500.

That number is meaningless, of course, without context, so a ranking’s only real value lies in comparison. Throw the sites of The Globe and Mail (a competing Canadian newspaper at the national level) and the populist Toronto Sun into the mix, and you get a quick visual comparison of traffic to all three sites over the past three months.

When compared to The Globe and Mail, the Star’s site ranking suddenly doesn’t look so hot. And it would appear that no one in the digital department at either paper needs to worry about the Sun in the near future.

Alexa has taken steps to go beyond simple site rankings, and you can now access deeper insights, like a site’s percentage of search traffic, high-impact search queries, upstream and downstream visits, and even demographic information about visitors.

But as with any competitive intelligence tool—particularly the free ones—you have to consider the data’s source. And because Alexa’s data comes only from users who agree to download its toolbar, its measurements can be extremely skewed. The data also tends to be biased in favor of Windows and Internet Explorer users.

Overall, Alexa is a decent first step in comparing your site’s traffic to that of your competitors. But don’t expect any level precision, and don’t rely on it for deep analytics insights. The free tools discussed below will better serve those needs.

Compete

Whereas Alexa might be considered a dated tool with a suspect source of data, Compete is a hot up-and-comer with a lot to offer. It’s basically Alexa on steroids. And though its free version pales in comparison to the depth of insights its paid platform offers, its “hybrid” data, which comes from a wide range of both ISP providers and opt-in panels, is far more reliable.

Here’s a quick comparison of monthly visits between the Star, Globe and Mail, and Sun—this time using Compete’s free version.

The data doesn’t look too far off from Alexa’s website rankings, but switch to unique visitors, and you get a slightly different view of the Sun’s viability as an online competitor.

Compete also offers an overall rank metric, as well as deeper metrics, including page views, average stay, visits per person, pages per visit, attention and daily reach, which are available through its paid version.

So what’s the downside? Though it’s more accurate than Alexa and other sources, Compete’s free version is still extremely basic, and its measurements are always at least a month old. You also can’t dial down any deeper than three-month increments. And though the hybrid data allows for greater accuracy, it also means you never know exactly where the data is coming from, so you can’t anticipate and account for the sample biases that come with a particular source.

Google Trends for Websites

Though Google is a notorious data hoarder through its own widely used search and analytics platforms, it also collects third-party market research data and consumer opt-in panel data and makes much of it available through some incredibly powerful free tools, one of which is Google Trends for Websites.

Google Trends for Websites is an alternative to Compete that compares to Compete’s free version but still lacks the depth of insight of its paid version. Like Compete, Trends for Websites lets you compare your traffic to that of your competition, as shown below.

Even better, you can compare traffic trends across custom date ranges, including the last 30 days, and you can drill down to specific geographic regions to see who takes the cake in different areas.

But one of the biggest advantages of using Google Trends for Websites is the “Also visited” data, which lets you see which other sites your visitors are checking out, giving you a clear picture of who your true online competition is. Below, we can see that while the Star and Globe are often thought to be direct competitors in print, the Sun is actually a more proximate competitor in terms of online visitor behavior.

And the “Also searched for” data shows that, while some Star readers are also searching for “globe mail,” even more are searching for “toronto sun,” meaning the Sun is a bigger competitor in terms of brand-name search.

Google DoubleClick Ad Planner

Another powerful free tool from Google, DoubleClick Ad Planner aims to help online advertisers decide where their budget would best be spent. It offers basic traffic and daily unique visitor metrics similar to those found in Google Trends for Websites, but the real meat lies in its demographic and psychographic visitor data. Unfortunately, demographic data is currently available only in the States and the UK, but the graphs below show gender, education, age and income levels for US readers of the Star.

Psychographic data is available in Canada, however, and the following comparison shows the main interests of visitors to each site.

So if you were an advertiser looking to reach sports fans, the Sun might be a better bet. But if you were an online editor at the Star looking to steal Globe readers, you might think about increasing your business coverage. And, similarly, a digital marketer at the Star might run search campaigns aimed at upping the exposure of existing business coverage.

Google Insights for Search

So far, we’ve looked at competitive data for specific sites, but you should also go beyond measuring your competitors’ actual sites to get a sense of the larger search ecosystem. And the perfect competitive intelligence tool for this purpose is Google Insights for Search.

Above we see that, within Ontario, searches for the Star far exceed those for its competitors, and the Sun has outranked the globe in terms of brand-name searches for almost the entire past year.

When you dial down to “Regional interest,” however, you can see that the Globe has a tighter grip on Toronto than the Sun. And if the Star wants to increase its online readership throughout Ontario, it might do well to start with regionally targeted search-marketing campaigns for Barrie, Guelph, Burlington and St. Catharines, where the Globe is dominating the search market.

Another cool feature you’ll find in Insights for Search is the “Rising searches” data, which warns of up-and-coming competitors that your visitors are increasingly searching for. Based on the image above, it should be clear to anyone at the Star that they’re now competing not only in the print-to-online category but also with news outlets from other traditional media, as their visitors are also searching for online news from CNN and CBC.

Microsoft adCenter Labs

Not to be completely left in Google’s dust, Microsoft also offers some interesting competitive intelligence tools through its adCenter Labs. Perhaps the most useful tool, “Search Funnels,” lets you perform a basic search-funnel analysis on keywords related to your brand. Initially intended to be used as a keyword discovery tool (a purpose for which it’s still well suited), it also lets you learn what brands users search for before and after searching for your brand-related keywords.

Below we see that, according to Microsoft’s data, 13.52% of people who search for “torontosun” later query “torontostar” (as part of the clunky user experience, the two-word “toronto star” didn’t register), while only 5.72% of people who search for “globeandmail” do the same.

Similarly, we can see below that 15.16% of users who search for “torontostar” go on to search for “torontosun,” while “6.76% later search for “globeandmail.”

Since both the Star and Sun are Toronto-specific newspapers, the fact that they’re sharing searchers isn’t unexpected. But should the outgoing searches related to the Globe, National Post and CNN increase, the Star might consider ramping up its national and international coverage online in order to retain visitors.

The final analysis

If paid competitive intelligence tools aren’t in your budget, the free tools described above will put you on the path to some incredibly deep competitive analytics insights. But before you start spying, keep these five essential rules of competitive intelligence in mind:

• Go beyond rank: Tools like Alexa were once groundbreaking, but they’re now just a starting point. Don’t rest your site’s success on rank alone, and never consider rank in isolation. Its only use comes with comparison.
• Step outside of your silo: Monitoring your site’s web analytics isn’t even close to enough. The actions of your online competitors will always have drastic effects on your performance, and the only way to understand those effects is to analyze your competitors and respond accordingly.
• Beware of sample biases: Whether your competitive analytics tool uses data from ISP providers (Hitwise), opt-in panels (comScore) or toolbars (Alexa), there will always be a sample bias associated with the source. But by anticipating that bias, and by understanding that completely accurate competitive intelligence will never be possible, you’ll still get a useful picture of what’s working for your competitors and how it’s affecting you. You should also keep in mind that even hybrid data (Compete, Google and Microsoft tools) is flawed in that its inherent biases can’t be isolated.
• Surveil the search ecosystem: Tools like Google’s Trends for Websites and Insights for Search and Microsoft’s adCenter Labs Keyword Forecast and Search Funnels are valuable for so much more than keyword discovery. Use them to understand what your visitors are searching for and what other sites they’re visiting. If you’re like most businesses, you’ll be surprised to learn who your true competitors are on the web.

That’s it. You now have the tools and knowledge to start spying on your competitors with no investment beyond your own time and energy. And if you decide to purchase a paid tool in the future, your experience with free tools will help you understand exactly what metrics—and which data sources—offer the greatest return on investment.

He could see the opportunity to market online. It was 2003. Birenbaum had just become co-owner and director of Camp Walden, a successful and well-loved overnight camp founded in 1970. He knew the competition was weak on the web. There’s a myth in the summer camp industry, says Birenbaum, that “traditional” camps must be traditional in business as well, including with marketing. Camps would typically just put out a brochure with some images—maybe create a video with slides set to soft music—and ensure calls were greeted by a soothing female voice. That was camp marketing. Traditional.

Getting Things Done by David Allen.

If this surprises you, stop reading now.

If you think vacation reading should consist of Dan Brown and Maeve Binchy—well, we can’t help you.

But if the beach image doesn’t surprise you—if, like us, you think about business and technology and personal effectiveness all the time—then this post is for you.

With a slightly sympathetic nod to kill-joy high school teachers everywhere, we’ve put together a list of books we think you need to read this summer. We chose them because they’ve helped us become better digital marketers (although many of them aren’t actually about digital marketing at all).

Most are new favorites, but a couple are classics that we’ve been pushing on friends, family and clients for years.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini

We’ve written and talked about this book so much that we’re continually surprised when people haven’t read it. Simply put, it’s a comprehensive look at the psychological factors that compel us all to act in certain ways—and if you’re in the business of trying to influence behavior yourself, it’s an absolutely invaluable resource.

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath

Another book we endlessly and annoyingly press on everyone we meet, Made to Stick outlines what makes an idea “sticky”—that is, memorable to the point of becoming a virtually universal cultural reference. Heard the urban legend about the tarantula eggs in the gum? That’s a sticky idea—and by studying how other ideas have become sticky, Chip and Dan Heath show you the way to make your own efforts that much more memorable.

Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson

A must-read if you want to understand the emerging digital economy and how to make money by giving stuff away. This book is foundational to understanding the web and e-business—as much if not more so than Anderson’s previous effort The Long Tail.

Googled: The End of the World as We Know It by Ken Auletta

An in-depth account of Google that positions the company as the symbol and, in many ways, natural outgrowth of the internet’s impact on publishing and advertising. Media companies can blame Google for their declining revenue—but not only is that blame misplaced, it prevents them from understanding the internet’s disruptive potential and how it might be unleashed in future.

Crush It!: Why Now Is The Time To Cash In On Your Passion by Gary Vaynerchuk

If you’re like us, you’ve already built your career around something you’re truly passionate about. But if you haven’t, Gary Vaynerchuk shows how anyone can take their passion and turn it into a viable career. He also delivers both high-level and platform-specific strategy and analysis, allowing you to take advantage of the current business environment while preparing to succeed as it changes and evolves.

Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

The founders of 37 Signals write a no-nonsense rethinking of how to successfully start and run a business as well as an examination of the ways that new companies are disrupting traditional business practices and making an impact.

You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto by Jaron Lanier

Lanier presents a discussion of the technical and cultural problems that can grow out of poorly considered digital design, as well as a warning that our financial markets and sites like Wikipedia, Facebook, and Twitter are elevating the “wisdom” of mobs and computer algorithms over the intelligence and judgment of individuals.

The Idea of Justice by Amartya Sen

This summary of the work of Amartya Sen, an Indian-born Nobel laureate, focuses on economic reasoning and the elements and measurement of human well-being.

Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial Systems—and Themselves by Andrew Ross Sorkin

Sorkin offers a fly-on-the-wall account of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the resulting fallout.

There you have it—a list that will set you up nicely for a summer of good reading.

(Oh, and that guy reading Getting Things Done on the beach? I didn’t make that up. That was Simon last February on a beach in Cuba, the day before his wedding.)

Do you have any invaluable books you’d like to share? Leave a comment with your recommendations.

Trust me, I’m as skeptical as anyone when it comes to social media. But that makes me even more attuned to seeing it done right. And here, I also saw it done right before my eyes, as Cafe Novo is about 20 steps from where I live. When it began its metamorphosis from an abandoned restaurant, I saw the kraft paper signs on which Elizabeth and Sadie drew pictures and encouraged people to follow their story on Twitter, Facebook and their blog. And I did.

Since it opened, I’ve been a regular. So Elizabeth and Sadie were kind enough to endure me asking about their success. Just how did two women with—in their own words—”little to no”  digital marketing background use social media so effectively? Here’s what we can all learn from them:

Be passionate and personal

If you take nothing else away from this post, remember this point: passion is infectious. In fact, I’d argue that passion is the most viral of all viral marketing. Elizabeth and Sadie exude passion, and the cafe reflects it. They serve organic and fair-trade drinks, and homemade baked goods, with an emphasis on vegan and gluten-free items. Why? Because it reflects their beliefs, with Sadie being a vegan and Elizabeth gluten-free. ”We want to keep it simple and make damn good coffee, tea and treats,” says Elizabeth. Their passion comes through in their tweets and blog posts. Takeaway: passion and personality matter. Not everyone will like the owners’ style. For those people, there’s a Tim Hortons or a Starbucks nearby. But people who resonate with Elizabeth and Sadie’s passion will be loyal customers.

Be engaging and interactive (online and off)

When Elizabeth (right) and Sadie (left)  found their cafe space and moved in, they covered the windows with kraft paper, wrote their names and a blurb about their favorite drinks, and encouraged people to follow them on Twitter, Facebook and their blog. Then they asked people questions—such as about their best and worst cafe experiences—and put their suggestions into practice. “Most effective was engaging people,” says Elizabeth, with tactics that also included giving away free samples, and alerting followers on Twitter and Facebook to those samples as well as freshly baked goods. (Example tweet: “SPECIAL TREAT ALERT !!!! Chocolate brownie truffles just put out – folks I’m ready to close the cafe and just eat these all afternoon they are so ridiculously good. Come get some!”) “If you think it’s too trivial to post about, it’s probably not,” says Elizabeth. “Also, most important, reply to people! If they comment, email you or otherwise engage you, talk back!” Takeaway: don’t lecture people; have a conversation.

Don’t worry about inexperience

Elizabeth and Sadie didn’t take courses in social media or read books on the subject. And they’re by no means technophiles (I endured Christmas music one morning as they’re apparently, and endearingly, more adept with Twitter than iTunes playlists). Elizabeth started the blog to keep her family in the loop, and was encouraged by a mommy-blogger cousin to get on Twitter.  ”She gave me the nudge to get Twitter going,” says Elizabeth, “telling me to just tweet what I was thinking, doing, etc., in regards to the cafe.” Sadie took charge of Facebook and ran with it. “Our only real plan was to keep everyone interested as much as possible by telling our story and keeping it personal,” says Elizabeth. Takeaway: just do it. Speed of implementation is important, and if you’re inept with the technology, be open and honest as it may actually endear you further to your audience. “Admitting you don’t know something and want others’ advice is a pretty great way to connect with people through social media that you wouldn’t otherwise have access too,” says Elizabeth. “And go all out! Be real, and people will appreciate it.”

Just one week in, that approach has already given Cafe Novo a massive following. ”For sure our opening was hugely impacted by what we’d been up to online ,” says Elizabeth. “One in three customers would come in saying, ‘I’ve been following your blog!’ or ‘I was the one who commented on your Facebook post about such and such!’”

And there’s no sign that initial success is wearing off.  ”So far today I’ve had three people come in and say, ‘I hear you have great muffins—any left?’” says Elizabeth. “All from two or three days of me posting on Facebook and Twitter what muffins are coming out of the oven in the mornings.”

Which reminds me: I’m hungry. Time to head for the cafe.

Images by Amanda Faig for BlogTO.com. Images published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 (Canada) license.

Unfortunately, creating UTM-coded links can be a pain. Google offers a URL builder to help, but it’s limited to one URL at a time. Sometimes you need to create batches of URLs. And sometimes you need to circulate those batches for review.

Having recently helped a client with that, I modified the spreadsheet we built for them and decided to make it available here. So if you need to create batches of UTM-coded URLs for Google Analytics:

Download this Excel spreadsheet: Google Analytics URL Builder for Multiple Links

1. Improve one-to-many management of client analytics accounts. Google AdWords (in which we do search engine marketing management) makes it easy to manage multiple client accounts. Google Analytics, less so. What would be ideal is one master client-management account for which all associated users could manage all child accounts. Additionally, cross-account reporting could be enabled at the client-management account level.
2. Facilitate easier sharing of custom reports and advanced segments with all users of a profile. Currently, the only way to share custom reports and advanced segments is by sending other profile users a link, which they must click to install a custom report or segment into their Google Analytics instance. This becomes quite cumbersome when you have even a few reports, segments and users. What would be ideal is the ability to share reports and segments with all profile users the way you can share goals, filters and other profile-level configurations.
3. Allow an unlimited number of custom reports to have the same name. Granted, this might cause some problems under the current sharing model, but I find it frustrating that you can’t create a report with the same name, but different features, in multiple profiles. I understand some of the thinking here. A report called, say, “Top Content by Location” might apply in every profile. But once you start configuring reports around, say, goals, all bets are off unless two profiles have the same goals. For example, if a report shows “Top Content by Whitepaper Download,” and the download refers specifically to a goal 1 configured in the profile, then the report is useless in other profiles unless they also have a whitepaper download configured for the same goal. However, they might have a whitepaper download configured for goal 2. Yet under the current model, it wouldn’t be possible to name another custom report “Top Content by Whitepaper Download.”

I fear that this has now become a rant, largely because a tiny percentage of Google Analytics users will even understand what I’m talking about, and I haven’t quite provided the description or graphics necessary to broaden accessibility.

But the bottom line is this: if Google is serious about creating an ecosystem of analytics consultants (and it appears to be quite interested), we need more features to facilitate the kind of work that entails. Beginning with some improved sharing features.

Unless I’m completely off the mark here. Anyone have suggestions for addressing these challenges (besides, of course, lobbying Google)?

But it’s really only a matter of time before marketers begin to figure out the social media conundrum and actually make it pay off. And we might have those first glimmerings in the “State of Inbound Marketing report” released this week by HubSpot and reported by eMarketer.com.

HubSpot’s study indicates that lead generation spending is 60% less among companies that dedicate at least one-half of their budget to inbound marketing tactics like search, blogs and social media.

Now, this doesn’t surprise us—at least, not the part about search. We’ve had a lot of success using cost-effective AdWords campaigns leading dedicated landing pages to generate leads for clients. Pay-per-click ads and SEO strategies fell below or near the average cost-per-lead 65% or 83% of the time, respectively.

But we were a little surprised to find that 63% of companies rated lead generation through social media as below average in cost-per-lead. And being skeptical journalist types, we wondered about the quality of the leads (leads mean nothing unless they turn into customers, after all)—until we looked at the chart that showed that, for business-to-consumer businesses, seven out of 10 companies had found customers through Facebook. (For business-to-business companies, LinkedIn was the most effective social media customer acquisition tool.)

So, apparently, there’s hope for social media as a marketing tool. But the lessons we’ve learned along the way—that campaigns that can’t be measured against concrete business objectives aren’t worth the investment—still hold true. If you aren’t realizing a positive ROI from your online marketing—or if you aren’t tracking your ROI in the first place—you’re wasting money, regardless of whether you’re investing in PPC ads or Facebook fan pages.

The projects have been—ahem—educational.

For one thing, we’ve all mastered a whole lot more French vocab than any of us learned in high school. “Accueil,” for example, means “Home” (in a website context, that is). And “homepage” is “page d’accueil.” Now we know.

We’ve also discovered that most school boards in Ontario—English and French, public and Catholic—have websites. But their ability to track visitor behavior and online marketing ROI varies wildly, from sophisticated analytics configurations to no apparent tracking ability at all.

But we’ve come to another, more far-reaching realization as well.

It isn’t only businesses that benefit from tracking website performance and keeping tabs on online marketing ROI. Public organizations—even ones, like school boards, that might not appear to emphasize marketing and sales—need accurate, customizable, comprehensive reporting tools.

And although this post has “school boards” in the title, the benefits of analytics tracking applies to any organization that wants to improve its marketing effectiveness and maximize its online ROI.

So, with that in mind, here are the top five ways school boards (read: any public organization) can benefit from Google Analytics.

1. Justify online marketing expenditure to trustees and other stakeholders

By capturing more robust return-on-investment data—which promotional campaigns are working to drive qualified traffic to the site, for example—trustees and other decision-makers can make informed decisions about prioritizing marketing budgets.

2. Determine whether the website is communicating effectively with parents, students and staff

Analytics data can tell you whether you’re effectively communicating key messages. For example, checking pageviews and bounce rates for a page about school closures will help determine whether the page is being used to its maximum effectiveness, and provide some context for improvement.

3. Gain understanding of qualified traffic sources

One school board discovered that, although government sites weren’t sending large amounts of traffic, they were referring highly qualified visitors, indicating that further partnerships with government sites would be in the board’s best interests. Analytics information helps you avoid unfruitful partnerships and see exactly where your ROI is coming from.

4. Tracking key activities that have direct impact on ROI (like downloading registration forms)

By tracking registration form downloads (something that hadn’t been previously done), one school board was able to gather data that will ultimately inform navigation, design and site architecture optimization to encourage more conversions. Websites are living entities—by keeping tabs on how your visitors use your site, you can encourage them to take significant actions.

5. Determining areas for potential expansion

Using Analytics’ map overlay tool allowed one school board to determine that they had a small contingent of foreign visitors to the site—providing key information for promoting the board’s offering to a small but significant secondary market. You may have interested prospects in places you never would have predicted—and analytics data can help you pinpoint where they are.

What’s your experience using Google Analytics for public organizations or non-profits? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.