The second Common Web Platform (CWP) meetup was held at the Ministry of Social Development’s Aurora Centre in Wellington on August 10, 2017. There were over 40 people who were interested in learning how to improve government website content using Google Analytics.
Recap - ‘Improving government site content with Google Analytics’ Lunch & Learn
Head of Product at SilverStripe, Nicole Williams, kicked off the event by giving a brief update on the CWP's roadmap and Co-funded Development Pool.
Nicole talked about recent developments for CWP include a relaunch of CWP.govt.nz, the updated document management module as well as UI and accessibility improvements to user forms. Content blocks was covered in detail as the next big development for CWP.
View Nicole’s slide on SlideShare
Using analytics to understanding your audience
Guest speaker and analytics expert, Lana Gibson, presented her talk on how to best use analytics and data to improve experiences for public sector audiences. Using plain english and clear examples, Lana demonstrated how analytics can be used to drive website design, content creation and performance for public sector digital teams.
View Lana’s slides on SlideShare
Top analytics insights
1. Design with data
Make decisions based on data, not intuition. Everyone has an opinion on how websites should look and what information should be displayed where, but without data those assumptions can’t be proven, let alone measured. Tracking data that is relevant to your website and its purpose helps to identify what resonates with audiences and what is blocking them.
2. Satisfying user need
Create compelling content that your audience is looking for. Using free research tools like Google Trends and Google KeyWord Planner, easily identify what topics people are interested in and what words are being searched.
3. Understanding what success looks like
Essential to any analytics campaign is communicating what metrics are being tracked and how it aligns with agency goals. Setting up simple dashboards and experiment lists enable teams to see the bigger picture of how the data you are tracking directly influences decisions and strategic direction.
Analytics Cheat Sheet for public sector
What’s next?
Sign up to the CWP meetup group to get notified of future events.
