All Metrics are Not Created Equal: Returning Visitors

I’ve written posts before as I thought about how to refine my approach to using the data we have about our users to tell more of a story than the obligatory number of hits to a page.  Today, I wanted to share what information I’ve pulled together to look at the returning visitor experience on our site.

Earlier in the year, I began thinking about how the prospective student journey roughly parallels the traditional business funnel. Returning visitors to our site, as I thought about it, fall into the decision stage. We’ve made it into the prospective student’s consideration set of schools and now they are digging in for more information to help them figure out what school will be the best match.  I began thinking about what would be important to know about visitors at this stage:

• New vs. Returning Visitors
• Goal Completions
• Geography
• Days since last visit
• Number of sessions
• Age breakdown

As I began creating my dashboard, I did remember a lesson learned from past mistakes and filtered my Google Analytics data to show only the returning visitors.

Much like I saw with the other dashboards I’ve talked about, I can now put together actionable information to answer questions such as:

• Where in our local area are returning visitors coming from? Are we seeing returning visitors in areas that traditionally bring students to our campus?
• Where outside our area are returning visitors coming from? Do we see an increase in returning visitors from new areas we are focusing recruiting efforts on?
• How quickly are people returning to our site?  How many pages are they exploring?
• What content is the returning visitor interested in that isn’t relevant to someone exploring our site for the first time?
• Are we seeing an age breakdown of returning visitors that mirror prospective students and their parents?
• Do we see more returning visitors completing the goals that we want?
• Do returning visitors view more pages than first-time visitors? Or do returning visitors show a more focused effort to find specific information?

When I first started working with analytics data, the best piece of advice I received was never provide data without context or meaning (unfortunately I don’t remember who offered that advice, or I’d give them proper credit).  That has been reinforced time and again as I put together these dashboards.

Finally, I’ll look at building a dashboard to look at goal completions.