Client Overview
As a publicly-funded government organization, our partners need to remain nonpartisan and have requested anonymity for the purposes of this case study. However, they wanted others to learn and benefit from their positive experience with analytics.
While we can’t tell you the name of this Albertan municipality, we can share that they are large and complex, with multiple stakeholders over a number of departments and campaigns, thousands of website pages, and lots of moving parts.
The Challenge
Back in the fall of 2014, our client had basic Google Analytics capabilities but knew that website data was not being properly captured or reported.
Realizing that insightful data can often make the difference between a poorly performing campaign and a successful one, the Web team asked Bluetrain to implement a new reporting framework to help their Communications staff understand exactly how users interacted with the website and to improve future campaigns.
Services Used
Our Solution
We proposed a five step process:
- Discovery & Measurement Framework
- Analytics Audit
- Implementation
- Multi-level Reporting
- Comprehensive Training
By the end of the project, we not only wanted our clients to have a bespoke, state-of-the-art suite of analytics, we wanted them to feel comfortable operating this new technology internally.
Bluetrain provided an outstanding level of service from the discovery phase through training and was instrumental in gathering requirements from different groups of stakeholders—with varying levels of analytics understanding—and translating those requirements into useful, insightful dashboards. Bluetrain also performed technical upgrades and implemented Google Tag Manager for our public website. Throughout the process, Bluetrain was very responsive, organized and diligent.
Employee
Digital Media Specialist, Alberta Municipality
How Did We Do It?
First, we held a series of key stakeholder discovery meetings, drilling down into the municipality’s website goals and finding any gaps in existing reporting.
This resulted in a Measurement Framework with clear key performance indicators and targets—an invaluable document when working across such a large scale enterprise.
Next, we audited the organization’s existing analytics suite and implementation.
We updated Google Analytics to Universal Analytics and implemented Google Tag Manager so communication staff could easily update tracking elements without changing website code.
Every group of stakeholders was interested in a different part of the website, from online swimming registrations, to PDF downloads, to recycling app uptake. We created a number of content groups, event reports, and conversion goals so that everyone could track the trends they were most interested in (and filter out the rest).
All of this data collection would be useless without an easy reporting system focused on the key metrics identified at the beginning of the project, so we created new site dashboards and reporting templates. Staff could access three levels of reporting: an executive overview, an in-depth look at specific content, or an even more granular campaign template.
Bluetrain created easy campaign reporting templates that could be set up quickly and reused for future projects. These templates compile any data tagged with a particular campaign name, tracking everything from the reach of different ad types to user behaviour onsite.
Finally, we prepared and facilitated comprehensive, in-person training for relevant staff, empowered them not only to report on current projects, but to set up new campaigns in the future.
19
custom analytics dashboards implemented
200K
average monthly website sessions
16
event categories setup through Google Tag Manager
Our Impact
The biggest outcome for our client was the successful implementation of an enterprise-level analytics and reporting setup that is already having a positive impact on their campaign results.
Granular data is now available on 16 website events (ex. downloads, form submissions) and 13 unique conversion goals (ex. transit map usage), allowing communications staff to see exactly how users are interacting and modify content accordingly.
In the short term, this data is useful for all kinds of queries, and stakeholders across the organization are finally able to see how their target audience interacts with content.
Data insights also allow staff to make small but impactful changes and drive the success of campaigns.
For example, staff recently learned that Facebook drives over 90% of landing page views from social media. With this insight they were able to modify the marketing mix of a crucial campaign, becoming more effective and saving money in the process.
Moving forward, our client has the tools and knowledge to properly measure website performance and improve on future campaigns. There is also a key long-term benefit as the municipality plans on building a new website in the near future and all of the collected data will have huge value during the redesign process.
The Long Game
We continue to work closely with this municipality, providing ongoing advanced analytics support and expanding on the number of website events and goals they are able to track. Because the analytics suite is built on such a solid foundation, it is efficient to accommodate new tracking requests and continue to improve campaign reporting.