Website analytics for districts? But why? We typically hear about the importance of website data when talking about marketing strategies, but school districts today need to pay more attention to their site analytics to better understand their community.

With the increasing level of competition among schools, it's more important than ever to optimize your school district's website to deliver a great user experience and in turn, support your district's brand.

Let’s discuss seven benefits of using your school district's website analytics and how it can help districts better serve their community.

1. See what content and pages are generating the most web traffic

Your district's analytics allow you to see what content and pages are generating the most web traffic. This information can be incredibly useful in determining what type of content and resources your community finds most valuable.

By analyzing this data, your school district can make informed decisions about what to prioritize on its website and ensure that content is relevant and engaging to your target audience. For example, if your district's news section is receiving a high amount of traffic, this could indicate that there is a strong interest in district updates and that you should provide more resources for that section of the site.

2. View real-time activity on your district's website

In addition to analyzing the overall traffic to your website, website analytics can also provide real-time activity data. This means that you can see how many people are currently visiting your website, which pages they are visiting, and how long they are spending on each page.

This information can be useful for identifying trends and patterns in user behavior, which can be used to inform future website updates and improvements.

3. Understand what your community is seeking from your site

Another important benefit of using website analytics is that it can help your districts understand what your community wants from your site. 

This data can be used to tailor the content on the website to better meet the needs and expectations of your community, and therefore create a more positive and engaging experience for your visitors.

4. See where your site traffic is coming from

Wouldn't you like to know how users get to your site? Analytics can provide valuable information about where your site traffic is coming from and which sources are driving the most traffic to your website, like social media, search engines, or email campaigns.

By understanding where your traffic is coming from, you can make informed decisions about where to focus your efforts and resources. For example, if the majority of the page views of your district's calendar are from a mobile device, how can you better structure and present the information in a way that's mobile-friendly?

Kings Canyon Unified School District has a lot to share on its district's calendar, and with most users accessing that resource from a mobile device, they can incorporate expandable calendar selections and filters, making all the events easily readable from a phone.

Keep Reading: The Mobile-Friendly Mindset: How to Create Websites that Prioritize the Mobile Experience

5. Discover who is using your site the most

Website analytics can also provide information about the demographics and characteristics of your website visitors. This can include age, gender, location, and even interests. By understanding the characteristics of your website visitors, you can tailor your content and resources to better meet their needs and preferences.

For example, if you discover that a large percentage of your website visitors are ages of parents typical of elementary school-aged children, or maybe there's a large amount of traffic volume coming to your site from another state, you may want to focus your content and resources on topics that are relevant to that demographic.

Would knowing the age of your users change your content strategy? If the majority of visitors were below 40, you might rethink how information is presented on the page — like incorporating more scannable text blocks with bullet points, using headers to separate content, and swapping images in for text whenever possible.

6. Track the performance of exact pages, content, or activities

Web analytics can also provide detailed information about the specific pages, content, or activities that users are engaging with on your website. This data can be used to identify which pages are the most popular, which resources are being downloaded the most, and which activities are being completed the most frequently. 

Virginia Beach's City Public School's site is beautiful! Its visual design and navigation are streamlined so families can quickly navigate to each school's site, move between different departments, or find more resources with just a click or two. A look at which pages are your most popular can help identify which pages and content should be pulled into your main or secondary navigation for easy access.

7. Monitor what is working well on your site and what needs adjustments

Finally, website analytics can be used to monitor what is working well on your site and what needs improvements. By identifying what is working, your district can double down on those efforts to continue to support the overall user experience.

On the other hand, by identifying what needs improvement. By regularly reviewing your website analytics, you can identify areas of your website that need adjustments to site content, page structure, and site navigation based on low engagement, low time spent on page, and exit rates.

Key takeaway

Take a closer look at your district's analytics. By spending more time with the data to identify patterns and trends, you can learn how to engage your schools, community, and families more effectively.