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Future student online experiences

Future student online experiences

Sharing the work of the Prospective Student Web Team

Category: Data and analytics

Is detailed programme information important to prospective students? Short answer: Yes. Long answer: Yes, and analytics and user research show us the marketing value of making this information accessible online.

Liaising with postgraduate marketing colleagues, I identified a need for an easy way for them to monitor data relating to demand for postgraduate degrees. I’ve built a prototype and am now working up a process to continue to improve this.

On 30 April 2024, we hosted an event to showcase the insights we gained from releasing a beta of the new undergraduate programme pages. This post gives a summary of the event, with access to the event slides and recording.

We’re running an online event on Tuesday 30 April to showcase the insights we gathered from running the undergraduate beta – a preview of what undergraduate degree profiles will look like when the new system goes live.

The version of Google Analytics we have used for the last ten years – Universal Analytics – was replaced in 2023 by Google Analytics 4 and the data it collected will soon be deleted by Google. I’ve been thinking about what we archive, how we do it, and why.

We’ve been using an analytics and feedback tool, Hotjar, on our beta pages of the new undergraduate degree profiles. The insight mirrors what we saw in earlier usability testing, so we’re implementing design changes to address issues.

This summer, I hired a data and analytics intern through the Career Services’ Employ.ed on Campus programme. It was a very positive experience all round – for the team, for myself as a first-time manager, and for Ash our intern.

I tagged along with user researcher Nicola Dobiecka on her quest to understand the postgraduate research (PGR) application experience to discover the points where user research and analytics overlap.

I have done research on the usage of subject area pages on the current degree finder, which shows that users spend a short amount of time on these pages looking for a link to the programme entries and don’t engage with any other content. Due to this, we are moving this subject area specific content […]

I have been supporting the team’s current website content auditing activity by looking at corresponding website analytics. In this post I will share some early insight trends and what I’m seeing in terms of website management behaviour that impacts what we can learn from website analytics.

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