Europe Website Analytics: Audience & Behaviour 2014

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1 Europe Website Analytics: Audience & Behaviour 2014 Rodney Zandbergs Senior Manager User Experience Web Services and Information Policy 19 May 2015, Version 1.1

2 Introduction Europe Website Analytics 2014 Audience & Behaviour Reports such as this aim to describe who the audience is and how they have been behaving on a website. It exposes the what so that recipients of the report can consider the why. Contents 1.0 Audience 2.0 Acquisition 3.0 Behaviour 4.0 Actionable findings 5.0 Appendices Homepage screen grab (rmit.eu), May 2015 Data source: Google Analytics RMIT Europe External (UA )

3 Analytics executive summary Europe Website Analytics 2014 Key traffic figures and observations for 2014 Volume: 18,000 users (Australia site was 648,000 users for March alone) Content preference: Study with us and About (otherwise a fairly even spread) Reaches a more European audience compared to our other country sites Issues: High bounce rates on important pages Low traffic and no audience growth Traffic acquisition is poor via external search Potential actions Site either needs extensive work or retire in favour of providing Europe-related information elsewhere. See section 4.0 for more information

4 1.0 Audience Who is using this website?

5 1.1 Audience: Summary Europe Website Analytics 2014 The primary audiences for our public-facing Europe website are: Affiliates & partners in Europe who seek to partner with our university in terms of education delivery, research activities or form industry connections. User archetypes (RMIT Mental Model 2014)

6 1.2 Audience: Analytics overview Europe Website Analytics 2014 Stats at a glance 2014 overview In 2014 the Europe website had visits from 18,000 users. This is a small volume compared to the Global site (257,000 users in 2014) and the flagship Australia website (500,000 users per month). Full lifecycle Since launch in June 2013, traffic to the site has decreased. It dropped by about 30% during the first 6 months and has plateaued at around 2,000 sessions per month throughout This trend continues into Traffic volume comparisons The Europe site draws a small volume of traffic compared to the other country-based websites: Europe site = 2,000 sessions per month Global site = 40,000 sessions per month Australia site = 1,500,000 sessions per month The higher traffic in the first 7 months of life is largely due to referrals from our other sites, rather than new traffic acquisition: More than 80% of referrals came from the Australia and Vietnam websites in Traffic from these sites halved in the first 7 months of 2014

7 1.3 Audience: Location Europe Website Analytics 2014 Traffic by continent. Europe website (left), Australia website (right) Top countries Observations The site appears is reaching a more European audience (proportionally) compared to our other sites. Top continent is Oceania (slightly ahead of Europe). 31% of traffic is from Europe, compared to the Australia site which takes only 1% from Europe. The Global site takes 3.5%. Full lifecycle comments In the first 7 months of life (June-Dec 2013), 50% of traffic came from Australia, most of these directly from the RMIT Australia website. The post-launch activity on the website, which no doubt included a significant volume of staff exploration, is not reflective of the stabilized pattern seen in 2014.

8 2.0 Acquisition How do users get to the website?

9 2.1 Acquisition Europe Website Analytics 2014 Top channels How does the site acquire traffic? Referral traffic (70% of total) Source and sessions Organic search (20% of total) Keyword and sessions 70.8% referral (cross-link) 19.7% organic search (unpaid) 8.2% direct 1% social media Observations More than half of the sessions on the site are coming from other RMIT sites, primarily the Australia site. The site is not performing well in terms of search delivering new visitors to the site.

10 3.0 Behaviour What are users looking for or doing on this website?

11 3.1 Behaviour: Overview Europe Website Analytics 2014 Top site sections Table: Content drilldown from homepage (top site sections) Observations High bounce rates (highlighted) indicate potential problems with content. Are user needs and expectations being met?

12 3.2 Behaviour: Overview Europe Website Analytics 2014 Most popular content Observations Key pages to optimise should be: - Study with us - About - Contact

13 3.3 Behaviour: Onward journeys Europe Website Analytics 2014 Referrals to rmit.edu.au Observations Traffic from the Europe site appears to have a healthy experience on the Australia site.

14 4.0 Actionable findings What changes will assist users and support business goals?

15 4.1 Actionable findings Europe Website Analytics 2014 The business owner should either remediate problems or make a digital strategy change. Remediation options Issue: High bounce rates on important pages Action: Review and revise content on the following pages to better deliver on user needs: Study with us, About, Contact, Research and Industry Issue: Low traffic and no audience growth Action: Infrequent content updates and a lack of advertising/promotion are likely factors. Review and execute a new marketing plan. Issue: Traffic acquisition is poor via external search Strategy change Revisit the RMIT Europe marketing plan in order to determine whether a better approach is to: Place Europe content within another website, (rather than maintaining a standalone site) or Further reduce the size/scope of the website, to be leaner, more relevant, up-to-date and supported by active promotion and SEO effort. Potential alternate sites to house content: Global site (Short URL: rmit.com/europe) Action: Review SEO and promotion strategies. See also previous point.

16 5.0 Appendices

17 5.1 Appendices Europe Website Analytics 2014 Bounce rates for content websites 25-40% Excellent 40-55% Good 55-70% May be problems Over 70% Bad Source: RocketFuel blog Google Analytics Benchmark Averages for Bounce Rate 40-60% Content websites 30-50% Lead generation sites 70-98% Blogs 20-40% Retail sites 10-30% Service sites 70-90% Landing pages