Leveraging Web Analytics:
Transforming Data Insights into Meaningful User Engagement
Background
Scope
Project Timeline: 6 Weeks
Role/Contribution: UX Researcher, Data Analyst
Team: 4 UX Researchers, Project Advisor
Methods: Web Analytics Analysis, Clickstream Analysis, Heatmaps
Tools: Figma, Miro, Google Analytics, Hotjar
Team: 4 UX Researchers, Project Advisor
Methods: Web Analytics Analysis, Clickstream Analysis, Heatmaps
Tools: Figma, Miro, Google Analytics, Hotjar
Problem
USA Rugby, the national governing body for rugby in America with over 110,000 active members aims to enhance its website by retaining current users and attracting new ones.
With the goal of creating a more streamlined content organization and information architecture, our team of 4 Researchers collaborated with USA Rugby, leveraging insights from Google Analytics and Hotjar to analyze a year’s worth of user behavior data, focusing on visitor analytics, navigation patterns, and content performance, targeting their membership pages.
Goals
Foundational Research For a Redesign:
Deliver initial research to serve as stepping stones for a full-scale redesign in USA Rugby’s website development cycle.
Evaluate Visitor Patterns Between Platforms:
Analyze patterns and trends such as bounce rates, serach engine optimization, and engagement between desktop and mobile visitors
Quantify Findings in a Digestible Manner:
Summarize and visualize data and insights in a simple and concise manner to be presented to the client.
Deliver initial research to serve as stepping stones for a full-scale redesign in USA Rugby’s website development cycle.
Evaluate Visitor Patterns Between Platforms:
Analyze patterns and trends such as bounce rates, serach engine optimization, and engagement between desktop and mobile visitors
Quantify Findings in a Digestible Manner:
Summarize and visualize data and insights in a simple and concise manner to be presented to the client.
Process
Summary
The project began with a kickoff meeting to discuss goals of gathering insights in improving website usability and user retention while attracting new visitors.
The project process started with an exploration of web analytics to analyze key metrics, such as bounce rates and navigation patterns to uncover user behavior trends and pain points. This was followed by a deeper dive into behavioral insights using Hotjar through heatmaps, which helped us identify high-traffic areas and user frustrations during navigation.
Based on these findings, we developed an A/B testing plan designed to evaluate potential improvements targeting content and SEO reorganization.
Finally, we presented our findings in a comprehensive report, summarizing key insights and offering a clear roadmap for iterative improvements.
Key Questions
“ How do visitors' navigation and engagement patterns differ between desktop and mobile devices? ”
“ What are the traffic sources and patterns such as bounce rates from and to the membership pages? ”
“What are the main user pain points? How do we include design elements to engage user retention? ”
Methodology
Google Analytics
Google Analytics was particularly effective for this project because it provided a comprehensive view of user behavior, including detailed metrics on traffic sources, navigation patterns, and user demographics. These insights allowed us to pinpoint how visitors arrived at the site, where they engaged the most, and where they dropped off.
Our primary focus was on user behavior, navigation flow, and understanding where visitors originated from and how they arrived at the website.
Hotjar
In addition to Google Analytics, we used Hotjar to dive deeper into user interactions and behavior. Hotjar complemented the analytics data by providing qualitative insights through session recordings, heatmaps, and cursor movement tracking.
It allowed us to observe how far users scrolled on pages, which elements they interacted with most, and areas where they encountered friction.
Findings
Over 70% of all are landing on the Public Rosters page
6/10 most viewed pages are pages that contain content related to memberships. Over 70% of users land on the Rugby Roster Page within the membership category, which is understandably so as this page houses key information such as team or member overviews.
As seen on Google Analytics, the previous period when compared to the current period shows an increase in pageview as well as entraces, but interestingly also an increase of bouce rate and exits.
To combat this, the “Click Here for the full page” element should be removed from the page. Conversely, when users land on the page and initiates a search, the results should be populate without redirecting them to another page to avoid confusion or frustration.
More Users on Desktop Spend Less Time on The Site.
The average session duration for desktop users has declined, while the number of new desktop users has grown. Over a one-year period, the average session duration for desktop users dropped 17%, while new desktop users increased 7%.
To address the decrease in session duration and engage the growing desktop user base, incorporating more interactive elements on key pages can boost engagement.
These enhancements would also improve navigation efficiency, making it easier for users to find relevant information while encouraging longer, more meaningful interactions.
SEO is Underutilized as Organic Search Numbers are #1
Traffic from organic search is underutilized, and aligning URLs with page titles can significantly improve SEO performance. Currently, 30% of users access the website through search engines rather than the homepage.
For instance, a page titled "Senior Club," embedded under the Membership section, has a mismatched URL, which can confuse both users and search engines, reducing SEO efficiency. Ensuring that URLs accurately reflect page titles enhances searchability, making it easier for users to find relevant content.
This change can improve user engagement, streamline navigation, and lower bounce rate through promoting user trust.
Conclusion
Besides compiling our findings for USA Rugby, our team also made a one page infographic that summarizes our key research insights, including key recommendations:
- Streamline information without having users redirected to too many pages to retain engagement and trust.
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Add interactive elemtns on relevant pages to increase user engagement and decrease bounce rates.
- Fix URLs to match page titles search results for better SEO to improve user trust.
Challenge and Work Around
A/B Test Plan
Since event tracking information was not available to us as this is one of the first reserach endavours USA Rugby has started, our team has come with a workaround with a hypothesis formed from our findings.
A general finding was that priority information architecture elements can benefit from being reorganized. Using our A/B test plan, event tracking can be set and the interactions observed, USA Rugby can continue to refrence our findings and see if certain trends can be optimized.
The example we have set is to move “Eligibility Resource” up in the “Eligibility” tab.
Reflections
Summary
This project was a difficult one especially as it was a the first one that required a deep knowledge of analytics. While learning to navigate Google Analytics and Hotjar was a breeze, the vast amount of datasets and overall numbers was not easy to comb through. However, as I grounded myself in the objectives of the project, and the structure my team has set up, it got easier to validate the insights we found.
This was a successful project to me as our team managed to hit all of our objectives, and helped the client understand the insights we presented. USA Rugby was overall satisfied with the project and said that these findings will impact the roadmap of their website redesign.