Looking Back at Rethink

We looked at our Google Analytics for the last year regarding the CSUMB home page, and tried to find any broad changes to behavior.

Specifically wanted to see if the changes we made on February 9, 2015 with CSUMB Rethink, our last redesign of the campus website, affected unique pageviews, time spent on page, one time visits and exits from our site.

In general, our visitors rose slightly but they spent less time on the home page while sticking around more.

Unique pageviews are "the number of sessions during which the specified page was viewed at least once." There is a slight increase from the Fall 2014 to Spring 2015 semester but no real affect seen from the redesign.

Average time on page is "the average amount of time users spent viewing a specified page." The steep drop was on February 9, when we launched the new website. This was precipitous, falling from 4-5 minutes to around one minute. There is certainly less to see but there's also less to try to figure out (e.g. hovering over images). We'd like to test whether this means people are finding what they need faster and moving down into the site.

Bounce rate is "the percentage of single-page visits." Very much like time on page, this drop represents a considerable amount of visitors who are finding us and staying. We would like to test whether this is because we've made it easier to find information.

Finally, the percentage of exits from our home page also dropped. This is great news, since a percentage exit in Google Analytics "is (number of exits) / (number of pageviews) for the page or set of pages," in our case csumb.edu. Again, like the lower bounce rater, more visitors are coming to the site and looking for information rather than leaving.