Analytics data is a websites life blood, if you are giving the wrong blood to your college website you are going to kill it! Do you know if your analytics code is set up correctly, just because you are receiving data does not mean you are receiving the correct data. Let’s take a step back from trying to advance our websites and make sure the information we are using to advance our site is correct. We can also look at a couple tools we can use to help us.

The Bad News

One of the major problems with college website is they normally span a number of subdomains, it is even worse if they also span domains. I am going to be completely honest, if you do not have the dream team of web developers for your college website you are never going to be able to handle multiple domains. My suggestion, is create new profiles for each domain, and do the best you can from there. You can still use optimization software which is important.

The Good News

Managing many sub domains is straightforward, you will have more of a problem getting code on all of the pages, but hopefully you have worked that out at by now. Also, you can track sub domains in separate profiles, but you need to recognize if you are measuring goals that span subdomains you need to have them in the same profile.

Here is what you need to change on your Google Analytics code for multiple subdomains:

Add the following line (in bold) to the tracking code on all pages of your subdomain and your main domain:

<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>


<script type="text/javascript">
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-xxxxxx-x");
pageTracker._setDomainName("example.com");
pageTracker._initData();
pageTracker._trackPageview();
</script>

Note the above information was taken from the Google Analytics help page.

How to know if your code is installed correctly

Take a look at Site Scan by EpikOne. Site scan scans your website and checks to make sure the code is installed correctly. It is an excellent resource and worth using, especially if your department is organized enough to take advantage of it.

Note:

• If you are using Google Website Optimizer it will throw errors on the pages that have both Google Website Optimizer code and Google Analytics code.

How many of you are at a point where your Analytics data is accurate and providing you with information to improve your website?

First things first, What is CrazyEgg?

CrazyEgg is an analytics tool that utilizes click mapping to gain a unique understanding of your users.

The Main Benifits:

1. You not only see what link they clicked on you see where on the link they clicked.
2. You can see if your users are clicking on parts of the page that are not links ( paid only)
3. You can view by time to click, i.e. how long it takes for a user to click on your call to action.
4. The confetti view (pic to the right) can separate out all the clicks based on Referees, Time to Click, Browser, and more.

So now that I sound like a typing CrazyEgg advertisement, let me get down to some honest truths. First things first, the heat map feature ( as seen in the pic at the top) is basically useless. It looks really cool, but does nothing for you, if you have a link that is more popular than other links you would expect it to have more clicks hence that is what the heat map shows you. It might be something you would want to show your higher-ups to get the funding. The plans are a little pricey when you can get other analytics software for free, but don’t ignore paying for a plan, the ‘paid only’ features are the most useful ones.

Best way to use CrazyEgg on a college website

If you are an important figure relative to the website then send an e-mail out to everyone telling them about CrazyEgg. And I would appreciate it if you linked them to this blog. If you are a webmaster or are in some way in charge of the website purchase a plan that works for your site. Then only use that plan for important pages that have recently been changed and are in need of analyzing. Have smaller departments sign up for the free account, so they can regularly keep track of their pages. And as before, if they ever need the features of the paid version then you set them up on a test with the paid account.

Also note: CrazyEgg is a test period based analytics software, which means you set up a test, let it run, then wait for results. Though you can see results before the test is complete.

Final Addition: In hopes of preempting e-mails asking what plan to buy here is my suggestion on how to save money: Find your average weekly visits for your most visited web page. Then purchase the plan that will fit the number of visits. This way you will test your highly visited site only when it changes, and the left over visits can be used for other sites.