Europe Website Analytics:
Audience & Behaviour 2014
Rodney Zandbergs
Senior Manager User Experience
Web Services and Information Policy
19 May 2015, Version 1.1
Introduction
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-4951048-21)
Analytics executive summary
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
1.0 |
Audience
1.1 |
Audience: Summary
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)
1.2 |
Audience: Analytics overview
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 2014. This trend continues into 2015.
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 2013. Traffic from these sites halved in the first 7 months of 2014
Europe Website Analytics 2014
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
1.3 |
Audience: Location
Europe Website Analytics 2014Observations
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%.
Traffic by continent. Europe website (left), Australia website (right)
Top countries
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.
2.0 |
Acquisition
2.1 |
Acquisition
Europe Website Analytics 2014Source and sessions Keyword and sessions
Top channels
How does the site acquire traffic?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.
3.0 |
Behaviour
3.1 |
Behaviour: Overview
Europe Website Analytics 2014Top 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?
3.2 |
Behaviour: Overview
Europe Website Analytics 2014Most popular content
Observations
Key pages to optimise should be: - Study with us
- About - Contact
3.3 |
Behaviour: Onward journeys
Europe Website Analytics 2014Referrals to rmit.edu.au
Observations
Traffic from the Europe site appears to have a healthy experience on the Australia site.
4.0 |
Actionable findings
4.1 |
Actionable findings
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
•
Action: Review SEO and promotion strategies. See
also previous point.
Europe Website Analytics 2014
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)
The business owner should either remediate
problems or make a digital strategy change.
5.1 |
Appendices
Bounce rates for content websites
•
25-40%
Excellent
•
40-55%
Good
•
55-70%
May be problems
•
Over 70%
Bad
Source: RocketFuel blog
