The State of Online Analytics in Higher Ed – 2010 Report

In May 2010 399 professionals working in higher education completed a short survey about the State of Online Analytics in Higher Education.

You can download the executive summary of the results of this survey as a PDF File.

Here are the main findings:

• 95% of survey respondents track web traffic data.
• 92% of survey respondents who track data use Google Analytics, 36% Facebook Insights, and 24% YouTube Insights.
• A staff member spends more than 20% of her/his time working on Analytics in only 35% of the cases.
• In 72% of the cases respondents spend less than 2 hours per week working on Analytics – including 8% who don’t spend any time at all.
• More than 70% monitor the 5 following metrics: visits, page views, unique visitors, referring websites and average length of visits.
• 54% monitor website bounce rates, 52% Facebook page fans and 40% Twitter followers.
• 35% don’t track any conversions, 32% do with admission info inquiries (47% wish they did) and 29% with online applications (44% wish they did).
• 43% wish they tracked online multimedia content (video/photos) as well as text-based content consumption.
  Analytics reports are not widely shared within an institution – even with senior management. In only 26% of the cases, they are shared with the VP/dean and 12% with the president.
• Insights gained from Analytics are used primarily to improve the website for 53%, but 15% don’t use them at all.

Comments and questions are welcome.
Please email karine@higheredexperts.com or post a comment below.