Carmen Neghina

Using Google Analytics to boost your international student recruitment

Facebooktwitterlinkedin

In the digital era, students’ primary source of gathering information about study programmes is on the web. But how do prospective students end up on your university website? From where did they convert? And once they visit your university website, how do they interact with it and which content is proving to be the most effective in generating leads? Measuring such elements and finding out what works and what does not is impossible to do without an analytics tool.

Getting familiar with Google Analytics can be overwhelming due to an overload of information or because it can be tough to decide where to start. On the long term, however, being able to make data-driven decisions with tools such as Google Analytics allows you to cut costs and increase the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and online strategy. Our Analytics and Consulting Team (ACT) compiled 5 short online training videos that help you get started.

Introduction: Google Analytics for International Marketing & Recruiting (10 minutes)

Investing in online advertising and promotion is an effective way of increasing awareness about your institution by bringing prospective students to your website. However, which channels generate the best Return on Investment (ROI)? How much does it cost to recruit a student versus how much revenue does that student generate for the institution? Google Analytics allows you to compare a variety of aspects.

“Google Analytics is like sharing your GPS data. It tells the owner of the website where you came from and what you are doing now.”

Chapter 1 – How to analyse your website for conversion (3 minutes)

Before you start with analysing your website, it’s important to know what you want to analyse by defining specific goals. It helps to imagine you are a student who is interested in one of your study programmes and considers to request more information. Ask yourself: what information is most important for me to know and where do I expect to find it? By thinking from the student perspective, this allows you to set goals and decide which pages should be tracked and the metrics you would like to measure and improve. For example, the number of views, the average time spent on that page or the conversion rate of a lead form.

Chapter 2 – Starting with Google Analytics: General overview (8 minutes)

You can track from which source a user reaches your website. Additionally, the average session duration and bounce rate reveal how engaged the student is on your web page and can give you hints on the effectiveness of your website structure. These insights allow you to make data-driven decisions, experiment with elements on your website (A/B testing) and improve its effectiveness.

Chapter 3 – Country breakdown per source (5.5 minutes)

Where does the traffic to your website actually come from (the source) and how does each source perform in individual countries? The country and continent breakdown feature allows you to see from which countries or continent the traffic is coming from. This information can be useful to decide to increase country targeted campaigns, for example with Google Adwords, in case you want more traffic from a specific country.

Chapter 4 – How to make a segment for conversion calculations (10.5 minutes)

Adding a segment to your Analytics can tell you more accurately how the traffic of one specific web page performs compared to the traffic of all users that are coming from different sources. With these numbers, you can compare which source brings better conversion, check the costs, and calculate how much you get in return.

Implementing Google Analytics on your website can boost your online student recruitment and shed light on your prospective student’s behaviour, enabling you to make data-driven decisions. Google Analytics offers many different features, however, even by starting to keep track of the most basic numbers, allows to gain new key insights. For example about which online channels bring the highest ROI, which channels should be dismissed and which elements on your university website perform well or require improvements.

 

About Studyportals’ Analytics and Consulting Team

Studyportals’ Analytics and Consulting Team (ACT) advises and assists universities and other institutions in the higher education sector and helps them realise their ambitions in the field of online marketing and international student recruitment. Our team of consultants can assist with everything from strategy, branding and marketing to customer relationship management, student recruitment, market insights, competitor analysis, Google Analytics and trainings. Want to find out more about our services or simply feel like having a talk? You can always reach out to us.

For more updates, follow us!

Facebooktwitterlinkedinyoutubeinstagram

More Blog Posts