We’ve only gathered two weeks of integrated data for our new home site — and we’re still fine-tuning, so caveat emptor — but already we can see some interesting trends on our two primary subdomains, www.bates.edu (home page and subsites) and home.bates.edu (the top levels and news site).
Compared to a year ago, our visits, page views, and pages/visit are up quite a bit.
Our bounce rate — visitors who arrive at a page or post and leave immediately — has gone down from 58% to 11% over the past year. This is a very good as a preliminary measurement of engagement.
The time on site is down, even though the number of pages per visit is up. This may indicate that people are scanning and understanding each screen more quickly and clicking to the next. If so, that is good. We’ll be investigating.
More segmentation is coming as we begin tracking exit links and gather more data. By way of background, here are some content measurement tips from our strategic partners at iSite.
[Update: Here's how we're approaching social media at Bates. Metrics to follow.]
Related posts:
Via RSS
Via e-mail
3 Comments
Longer time-on-site isn’t always a good thing: if users quickly found what they were looking for, that’s a great experience.
Pat Lynch
Good point, Pat.
What a refreshing Giving sites at Bates. I would just enjoy replicating what you have for our college. We are a llittle behind the curve and really need some help gettng an interact website for our foundation up and running. We’re handicapped that the college’s website management software does not permit anything different than what it has. We have Raiser’s Edge donor tracking software and are considering getting their Ntetcommunity product but again its quite expensive. It was good to see that hyou have Stelter planned giving component and we’d like to add that as well so we can move our fund raising into the 21st century.
Bravo Bates for a informative site and ideas!
Baltimore MD