There was a time when
tracking website data for most nonprofits wasn't affordable or even feasible,
mostly due to an antiquated mentality and the lack of technology and resources. There
was almost a stigma of denial from the nonprofit world about using analytics.
In the book, Working Well,
Working Hard, author David E. K. Hunter wrote that many nonprofit leaders in
the past thought of data assessment/management as “dehumanizing practices of
the corporate sector and (that it) reeks of rampant data gathering run amok”. A
lot has changed over the past two decades, as the digital technology advanced
so did the nonprofit mindset. Nonprofit leaders are now focusing on data driven
results and are tracking their digital data, especially their websites.
On WiredImpact.com, blog writer David Hartstein recommends
nonprofits use Google Analytics to track the following three basic metrics to determine
their website's performance:
- Landing Pages that Lead to
Conversions
- Traffic Sources that Lead to
Conversions
- Pages with the Highest Exit Rate
A landing page, as defined by
a Web Metrics graduate course at West Virginia University, is the web page
where a visitor begins their first user experience, it is the first page they
land on. What you want to measure are the conversions of a specific landing
page. Did the visitor make a donation, click on another link, or sign up to
volunteer? Knowing which pages are having the most successful conversions helps
you determine which pages are working and which ones need more attention.
Number two, tracking sources,
where are your visits coming from - the traffic sources that brought a visitor
to your website. How did someone find you? Was it a webpage referral from another
website, the result of a search, or direct traffic - did the user type in your
URL directly into their browser or did they click on a campaign link off of
a newsletter/e-blast? Knowing where your traffic is coming from can help you put
more focus on those sources that are working.
The final measurement for
this discussion are exit rates on your web pages. Understanding this can be a
bit confusing. In the book, Web Metrics 2.0 by Avinash Kaushik, he states that
98% of visitors to your site will leave without a conversion. Trying to
understand why someone left is like guessing and a bad metric says Kaushik. In
order to measure why they left you need to track the bounce rate, this is how
many visitors left the site without clicking anywhere on the page or going to
any other page. This differs from exit rate which could have visitors who
arrived on one page but exited off another. To understand exit rates better, we’ll
look at Harstein example, “Let’s say 10 visitors view a specific page of your
website. Eight of them leave your website from this page while two others
go look at more pages. The exit rate for this page is 80% (since eight of
the 10 visitors left your website from this page).” Measuring which pages have higher exit and bounce
rates lets you know which pages are not effective in engagement and
conversions.
To learn more on how to use
Google Analytics and to track metrics, read David Harstien’s full article by
clicking
here.
