How to prove your PTI website works, with analytics

“Why should we fund this website over other priority items?”

This is a question every PTI coordinator dreads. You know that the Parent Center’s website brings in families and promotes your services to the community, but the board isn’t going to just take your word for it. 

You need something tangible to put in front of them. Something that will quantify the impact of your website, the website user interface, and other digital communication tools on the center’s community footprint. 

Analytics are the key. Specifically performance analytics, and the insights they trigger. 

Metrics make money happen

If done right, website metrics and analytics can help you quantify your website’s effectiveness and prove it’s value to the organization. 

Note the phrase “if done right.”

There are plenty of web tools and content management systems that supply website and digital marketing analytics to marketers, but these metrics are either not useful or insufficient to prove value. And they’re certainly not enough when funding is at stake. 

For you to report effectively, you need comprehensive website analytics that track everything from the number of repeat views, resource downloads to the users’ behavior on the site.

Let’s break down a few of the most critical metrics your analytics report should contain:

New users vs. returning users. This is far more useful than a single overall number for web traffic. Here, you can tell how good of a job you’re doing with reaching new people, and whether or not your website is useful enough to keep them coming back for more.

Visitor geography. Especially important if you want to be sure your local branch is reaching people you can actually help.

Behavioral analytics. What are visitors doing on your site? What pages do they visit and what pages are they leaving from? 

Downloaded Resources. Your branch offers resources on a variety of topics affecting your constituents so it’s important to know which resources that are regularly being downloaded and which aren’t. If you know this, you’ll be able to produce more content that interests them.

The above isn’t a complete list (not by a long shot). It’s just part of a comprehensive analytics package supplied by AmDee’s Advanced Analytics Reporting. And that’s not all the report covers, either. 

Proving more than just your website’s value

These days, it’s not enough to simply have a website. You need to be able to reach out to people proactively on social media, come up with video marketing content on YouTube or other video platforms, and be active in online communities.

All that costs time and money, which also means you have to justify it to the review board.

Fortunately, there are analytics for that too. 

Top social network. Focus your efforts on the social networks that are getting the most traction. If you can prove that Facebook ads are getting you visitors, the review board isn’t going to complain when you ask for an increase in your ad budget. 

Day of the week/Time of day per network. Whether you’re on one social network or all of them, this handy metric will tell you which day of the week or time of the day you should be releasing your content–for each social network.

YouTube analytics. Track how many views your YouTube videos have and whether or not they’re encouraging discussion and getting shared online. 

With these numbers at your disposal, you’ll be more convincing when proving to the board why your website and digital marketing efforts are worth the investment. We can even give you a leg up by conducting quarterly, 30-minute meetings where we give you three action items to focus on to improve your website’s performance so that you will have one of the best user experience websites.