Concurrent Sessions

Website Usage Statistics in Higher Education using Google Analytics

Mon 3:35 – 4:20PM — Chestnut A
Sucharitha Bachanna, West Virginia University
Sarah Barnes, West Virginia University

Google Analytics (GA) is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about website visitors. Its sophisticated and intuitive reporting tools help you monitor traffic and make it easier to understand how your website is working for your users. GA segments visitors by noting where visitors came from, how long they stayed and their geographical position, browser and operating system capabilities, network properties, entrance and exit paths, site overlay, custom reports, motion charts, etc. GA also tracks visitors from referrers, including search engines, display advertising, pay-per-click networks, email marketing and even digital collateral such as links within PDF documents.
At the WVU Office of Information Technology, two websites – eCampus information and the OIT uses GA to gather the statistics. This presentation will include the set-up of GA, review features that are of most importance to higher education websites, and discuss how this data impacts decisions in support, design, layout, navigation, system monitoring and infrastructure, and usability.


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