In my last E-Portfolio post, I talked about the ways Temple Athletics could implement Roger’s 5 Core Branding Strategies into their approach as they refresh Owlsports.com. There had to be a way for me to see if we connected owlsports.com to a Google Analytics account and put my Google Analytics IQ Certification to the test. So, I used what little pull I have in our business office to see if they would allow me to learn from our own Google Analytics accounts.
I scrubbed through the data I was granted access to. I have been studying the trends for over one month from March 14th to April 14th. Some interesting points in the data that I came across could be addressed as Temple signs a new deal for a new website.
The Owlsports.com audience consisted of 68.6 % Male 31.4% Female. The largest age range was 18-24 at 22%. This probably accounts for recruits, current students, and the athletes themselves. Following were the 45-54 aged fans at 21%.
The number one language of users visiting the site was English in the USA at 80%. However, the 2nd highest language used was Portuguese from Portugal with about 13,874 users which is 13% of the audience with a bounce rate of almost 99% and 4 seconds on each page. I’m assuming the page didn’t translate well to these visitors. Temple could hire a translating specialist or implement technology to better translate the pages since a decent following is coming from Portugal.
Behavior:
The average time a user spends on each page is around 2 minutes. People tend to be either scrolling through rosters or reading articles. The homepage had a bounce rate of 40%.
After looking at the whole month two very specific dates show themselves on the graph – March 22nd and April 5th. I went back and forth between the Google Analytics charts and Owlsports.com and found those two dates were directly related to Temple Women’s Basketball. March 22nd was when the Tonya Cardoza article came out about her not returning for another season. April 5th was when new Temple Women’s Basketball head coach Diane Richardson was hired. These articles led to an increase of 3,000 new users to the site combined.
Looking Forward:
There are multiple segments of users that visit Owlsports.com. With all this data being at o
ur fingertips, there are a few directions this website refresh could go to take the website to the next level. Creating a more personalized experience for users with all the information easy to find would be a step in the right direction. I would love to see the creation of an Owlsports app to connect fans to information, tickets, and profiles faster. Most of the users accessed the website through a mobile device. Creating a better user interface via a mobile app would give easier access to Temple Athletics. Then, we could track the data easier to deliver a better experience for each individual. A metric or survey that would be interesting to add to this site would be the number of alumni that visit. Temple could implement this metric by creating a login or portal for owlsports.com fans. One of Temple’s main goals is to engage alumni better, this would be a great start.
Sources:
Data sourced from Google Analytics Account from Owlsports.com with the permission of Temple Athletics
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