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How many times a week do you get interrupted by calls about information that’s right there on your website—but the caller couldn’t find it?
What if you could cut those calls in half?
It’s all about understanding how people interact with your government website: what they’re looking for, how they’re looking for it, even how they feel about it.
With Google Analytics, you can get a little window into your users’ heads.
Google Analytics is a free web analytics service that tracks and reports on your website traffic. You can get insights into users’ needs and preferences by collecting data on:
- How they get to your site
- What pages they visit
- How long they stay
- What paths they follow
Is it complicated? Not necessarily. There’s a lot to learn in Google Analytics. But getting started with a few basic reports isn’t as hard as you might think.
In this blog post, we’ll walk you through using Google Analytics to pinpoint what works (and what doesn’t) in your government website’s current navigation. We’ll include examples from MCCi clients’ Google Analytics as models that you can use to help you analyze your data!
Why Do I Need Google Analytics for My Government Website?
Google Analytics helps you make sure that your government website meets the public’s needs. By analyzing user behavior, you can identify which parts of your website are performing well and which areas might be causing confusion. You can make informed decisions about how to structure your navigation menu and organize content. Citizens find what they’re looking for easily, so your staff gets fewer phone calls.
How Do I Access Google Analytics for My Government Website?
New to managing your organization’s website? Use this Google Analytics guide to get started setting up your account. If you feel like you’re over your head, you may want to hire a consultant.
If your website had Google Analytics before you took over, you’ll need to find out who has the credentials so they can give you access.
Also note that in mid-2023, your organization should have migrated your data to Google Analytics 4 (GA4). If you didn’t, you may have data missing.
Most Visited Pages
Now that you’ve logged into your GA4 account, let’s start with an easy win: What pages on your site get the most traffic?
To find out, click on Reports > Engagement > Pages and screens.
Make sure these high-interest pages are easy to get to on your navigation menu.
One warning here: If a page is frequently visited but has a high bounce rate, that tells you that people aren’t finding what they expected on that page. Change its label to something more descriptive. Then, ask yourself what services or information users might have been looking for instead. Make that information more visible on your homepage.
Least Visited Pages
To sort by which pages have been viewed the least, click the down arrow next to “Views” on the “Pages and Screens” report. This will sort the pages with the least viewed at the top.
There could be two causes for a page not getting much or any traffic:Â
1) It’s too hard to find. Maybe it’s buried six clicks deep, so users don’t even know it’s something they can access.Â
2) It’s genuinely not something users are looking for. We sometimes have clients tell us they want to prominently feature a particular page because they think it’s important. But if there’s a highly visible link that no one clicks on… The data shows that it’s not something your users typically need.Â
Path ExplorationÂ
This is one of our favorite tools for evaluating your site structure because it shows how users interact with your navigation menu. Orbit Media gives a good breakdown of how to access your path exploration and the insights you might discover from it:
“Here are thoughts you might have and actions you might take:
‘Whoa, 20% of our visitors are looking for a job!’
…then you make a segment or filter to exclude those visitors while analyzing lead generation marketing.
‘Wow, people want to see our team members.’
…then you polish up those bios and start featuring your talent on your homepage.
The basic idea is to remove things that rarely get clicked if they aren’t important, rename them if they aren’t important, or move things around to help visitors get where they’re trying to go.”
Want a government-specific example? Let’s look at “Llama County’s” path data. (This is data from a real client of ours, but we changed the name.) In the 28 days we pulled this data for, 224 people clicked on “Human Resources.” Then 97 of those people went back to the County’s homepage. But from there, 42 went back to the Human Resources page! It’s clear that whatever people are looking for when they click Human Resources… They aren’t finding it quickly.
So, what could this county do to improve the user experience?
Crazy Egg allows you to put surveys on either open-ended or multiple-choice pages. They could add a question on the Human Resources page that asks, “Did you find what you needed on this page?” If the user selects “No,” they get an open-ended question, “What information were you looking for?” They can even leave their email address so the county can follow up with them directly.
Google Search
If you have pages often accessed by Google search, that may be a sign that they’re difficult to find on your website navigation.
To understand why, suppose you’re a Town of Llamaville resident and need to pay your water bill. You go to the Smithville website first, but you can’t figure out how to do it. You go back to Google and search “Pay Llamaville water bill.” That leads you to the Smithville water department.
Maybe the Town of Llamaville needs a big button that says “Pay My Water Bill” rather than making users click on “Utilities,” then “Water Department,” and then “Pay My Water Bill.”
Seasonal Variations in Google Analytics Data
Some pages are going to be more important to your residents during certain times of the year: information about snowplows, lawn waste collection, voter registration, etc.Â
See the spike in visits to the Rossville, Kansas, “Tall Corn Festival” page in August?
To be sure you’re accounting for these variations, look at one or two years’ worth of data. Notice where there are anomalies. You may want to add high-visibility buttons to your site at certain times of the year to correspond with your residents’ seasonal needs.
Visitor Demographics
Take a look at your visitors’:
- Location
- Language
- Age
- Gender
- Interests
Device Types
What platform or device type do your visitors use? This may impact how you design your navigation. From the clients’ data that we reviewed, users were almost evenly split between desktop and mobile, with around 1% using tablets or smart TVs.
But desktop use drops sharply on weekends, particularly for our county government clients. This suggests that many people use desktops to access the website for work purposes, such as when a contractor is applying for a building permit. But residents on the site for personal use are more likely to be on mobile devices. See whether this trend holds true for your website.
So, What Now?
Now that you know about your audience’s behavior, you’re ready to design your navigation menu! Get our e-book, “User-Friendly Government Website Navigation: The Ultimate Guide” for practical tips on:
- The fundamentals of user-centric design
- Using data to understand your user
- Types of government website navigation menus
- Demographic considerations in setting up your navigation