Due to the nature of this project, the scope was broad. Therefore it was essential to hone in on a few KPIs and build off the established foundation. Communication with the client was of key importance for the definition of these indicators as it allowed me to hone in on what audience metrics, reports, and goals best indicated digital success.
As previously mentioned, optimization was one main part of the overall mission for FTL's GA property. First and foremost the property dashboard needed to quickly show the organization's KPIs. These, I defined through a series of conference calls and immersion into the past two years of quarterly performance segmented by parts of an eighth. Once the client was satisfied with the indicators, I built the dashboard out at their request to quickly and efficiently demonstrate the KPIs we had discussed. This included heatmaps of user engagement segmented by time under day of the week, biweekly donation conversion rate graphics, users by country and other demographically relevant material, new users per week, etc.
Once the dashboard was set up, I moved on to custom reporting. For example, FTL wanted to see overall sessions and pages per session by city segmented into converters and non-converters in one report, but there was no such relevant report. So I created a custom city report for the metrics "sessions" and "pages/session", under a geographic dimension, and allowing for the property viewer to easily filter between converters and non-converters. Additionally, I built out relevant segmentation for quick filtration across essential GA reports such as key target age groups by gender, major geographically international user segments, and segments by language.
Next, I set up specialized goals to track completions from specific webpage button hits to steps across the marketing funnel according to FTL's needs. Finally, to ensure the data collection was viable, I filtered all employee IP addresses, including mine, out of the property.
With the property optimized, I moved on to the distillation of metric data into usable marketing strategies. For example, analysis of the bounce rate for FTL's main landing page across the default channels showed that audiences weren't clicking through to the content that they desired. There was a disconnect. Therefore, after some volunteer surveys and internal research, we were able to distinguish where that disconnect lay along the steps from ad view through page view. Specifically, in one case, users let us know that the social content they were seeing led them to believe that they'd click through directly to the donation page for quick payment info entry. Instead, they landed on the home page and subsequently had to click through multiple pages to get to the donation page. The barrier of entry became too high and users dropped out of the funnel. Once this issue was fixed, e-commerce conversion rates for social referrals lifted slightly.
I spent the majority of my time optimizing FTL's property to increase marketing efficiency and create a more informed organization once I was gone. It was a positive experience to watch the overall goal conversions for FTL's property lift by 17% and see user engagement rise approx 23% on the website due to changes the web dev team instituted based on my reports. E-commerce conversions or donations rose 3%, leaving me with a sense of accomplishment in helping to build a more funded organization dedicated to creating change in the lives of those less fortunate overseas