Analytics review

What can we find out about postgraduate students' information needs by looking at the analytics information we have available?

Reports and analysis

All analytics reports are based on the “Filter out staff oncampus” Google Analytics property since students are our target audience.

I’m no Google Analytics expert so feel free to look into whether it's possible to dig more information out of Google Analytics and to check my assumptions.

See also:

How analytics can inform WIP II

Summary of insights

As Google Analytics is currently set up, it’s easier to get information about the demand for content (number of pageviews or searches) than it is to get information about actions or paths through content (events, exits).

High demand content

The most viewed and most searched for PG-related content covers:

• courses*
• apply/application/entry (including PhD proposals)
• scholarships
• thesis/theses/research (including finding topics)
• career/work
• fees
• PhDs/doctorates
• professional/vocational programmes

* Note that some students use the term 'course' as we use 'programme'. See below.

Content blocks

Some of this high demand content is likely to be provided as content blocks within the pages for individual PG programmes:

• courses
• apply/application/entry (including PhD proposals)
• scholarships
• thesis/theses/research (including finding topics)
• career/work
• fees

Prioritisation

The higher level high demand content could guide any prioritisation we might do (e.g. how much work we put into it, when we tackle it, future attention the pages get).

If so, we could prioritise information about:

• PhDs/doctorates
• Professional/vocational programmes

Language use

The internal search report will be useful for checking our language to make sure we use the terms students use when looking for a particular piece of content.

e.g. do more search for “teaching” or “education”?

What is the most viewed PG content?

Top PG pages by pageviews combined - Filter out staff oncampus 2015-04-19-2016-04-18.xlsx

This report covers pages with URLs containing these PG-related strings:

• postgraduate
• professional-programmes

plus other PG-related sections:

• http://www.victoria.ac.nz/fgr
• http://www.victoria.ac.nz/stout-centre/study
• http://www.victoria.ac.nz/sacl/study/mpa
• http://www.victoria.ac.nz/sog/researchcentres/egovt/master-of-e-gov
• http://www.victoria.ac.nz/sgees/study/subjects/gis
• http://www.victoria.ac.nz/nmh/prof-programmes
• http://www.victoria.ac.nz/modernletters/study

The data isn’t based on a comprehensive collection of all PG-related content but it should be indicative.

I've just discovered that it may be possible to set up Page groups within Google Analytics (a way to group multiple pages and analyze site traffic in terms of these groups instead of the individual pages) though this needs admin access. This might have been a better way of putting together this report.

Analysis of the most viewed PG content

Top ‘themes’

I grouped together the top pages into ‘themes’. I went through top results and for each content 'theme' that I identified in the top 50 pages (e.g. phd, courses, masters, scholarships), I totalled up the number of pageviews of pages with URLs containing that theme.

*(46529 excluding main victoria.ac.nz/study/programmes-courses/ pages)

Insights into top themes

• Potential priority page elements/content blocks based on popularity of themes are:
  • courses
  • apply/application/entry
  • scholarships
  • thesis/theses/research
  • career/work
• The higher the level of study, the more popular the content (PhD at the top down to certificate at bottom).
• VBS content dominates: MBA, MIS, VIAF, MIM, MPA
• Professional programmes are popular, though much of this is down to the fact that this was one of the criteria for inclusion in this report. The MBA pages contribute many of the pageviews for this theme.

Notes on selection criteria

The results are influenced by PG-related terms not used to select URLs for the Top PG pages list. Eg, I didn’t use terms like "research", "masters", "honours" (because it didn't occur to me at the time). A quick check of the URLs missed as a result shows that "masters" and "honours" didn't miss many (they also had "postgraduate" in the URL) but "research" did. Had "research" been included it would have been a higher ranked theme (though some/many pages with "research" in the URL will not be PG-related) but it didn't seem to make much difference otherwise.

If there are other terms that should have been used to select URLs for the Top PG pages list I can do the same sort of check to see how it affects the results.

Top top-level sections containing PG-related content

I grouped together all the pages sitting under top level sections/sites.

Top 10 top-level sections containing PG-related content

Insights into top-level sections containing PG-related content

Content on professional/vocational programmes is among the most popular. Of the top 10 top-level sections containing PG-related content, six are either mainly vocational or schools that offer professional programmes (School of Management, School of Information Management, School of Economics and Finance, Faculty of Education, Graduate School of Nursing, Midwifery and Health).

What search terms are users using to land on PG content?
What is the most searched for PG content (internal and external searches)?

Internal searches

Top internal searches - Filter out staff oncampus 2015-04-19-2016-04-18.xlsx

Use this report to guide language choice

This report will be most useful for making sure we use the terms students use when looking for a particular piece of content.

e.g. do more search for “teaching” or “education”?

Insights

A scan of the searches to see if there are any trends shows that lots of students are searching for:

• scholarships information
• date or time-related information (e.g. key dates, exam timetables, trimester 3)
• courses

Note on bias in search data

Faculty and school sites don’t have search function. A search made on Homesite will bring up results on F&S pages but most users will not know they can go to Homesite to search F&S pages. Will this skew results? Possibly, because searches are less likely to be made by people in the context of or prompted by (and therefore related to) the kind of information that sits on F&S sites, so that info is less likely to represented in searches.

External searches - Google

Top external Google searches - Filter out staff oncampus 2016-01-18-2016-04-17.xlsx

To try to narrow the data down to PG-related searches, in the Selected PG-related themes tab I pulled together queries that include these terms: postgraduate, post, graduate, certificate, diploma, masters, hons, phd, doctor, mba, research, thesis

Insights on the top external searches on selected PG-related themes

The following searches come up multiple times and towards the top of the search terms ranked by clicks:

• information about how to do a PhD proposal
• scholarship information
• information on choosing thesis and research topics.

*Searches including the term 'courses' suggest students use it as an equivalent of our 'programme' (‘postgraduate courses in new zealand’, ‘post graduate diploma courses in new zealand’, ‘graduate diploma courses in new zealand’, ‘victoria university postgraduate courses’, ‘pg diploma courses in new zealand’, ‘diploma in development studies courses’, ‘postgraduate nursing courses’, ‘post graduate diploma courses’, ‘diploma courses in new zealand’) 

What searches are made from PG pages?

Top searches - pages inc 'postgraduate' in URL- Filter out staff oncampus 2015-04-19-2016-04-18.xlsx

This report shows the top searches made form pages that include ‘postgraduate’ in the URL.

Summary

The top 10 searches are specific subjects/programmes:

• psychology
• nursing
• mba
• phd
• TESOL
• accounting
• teaching
• creative writing

plus:

• fees
• scholarships

Insights

• The top 10 is dominated by vocational subjects
• Potential content blocks based on popular searches are:
  • fees
  • scholarships

Note: Searches made from pages with ‘postgraduate’ in URL is a small dataset.

Are there PG-related searches that bring up no results?

We haven’t been able to dig this report out of Google Analytics or Google Search Appliance.

Where are common drop­off points?

I haven’t been able to come up with anything useful here.

This report lists Exit pages with ‘postgraduate’ in URL but I’m not sure how we can use the information:

https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/#report/content-exit-pages/a2769050w5097409p49006006/%3F_u.date00%3D20150419%26_u.date01%3D20160418%26explorer-table.plotKeys%3D%5B%5D%26explorer-table.rowCount%3D100%26explorer-table.filter%3Dpostgraduate%26explorer-table.rowStart%3D0/

Note that current data on exits is incomplete and In-page reporting isn't currently working.

We may be able to get this information on a page by page basis as required via Behaviour > Site content > All pages > Navigation summary tab or by setting up Page groups.

What are ‘conversion rates’ like (clicking on Apply / Get in touch links)

I don’t think we’re able to get information on this with the way GA is currently set up. There are no funnels set up and the events that have been set up are legacy settings and not useful.