Social Communications

Over the last week i’ve been pulling together some reports using our web site analysis tool VBIS.

I’m not looking for anything in particular, I’m just interested to see how levels of engagement with various OU sites differ amongst visitors who arrive from different sources. The reports I’ve set up look at people whose first ever visit to the OU site occurred between 1/10/07 and 31/01/08 where:
- They found the OU via natural search and the first page they visited was OU Home / study at OU / OpenLearn
- They found the OU via banner ad and the first page they visited was OU Home / study at OU / OpenLearn
- They found the OU via adword and the first page they visited was OU Home / study at OU / OpenLearn
- They were referred to the OU by Facebook/Netvibes/Delicious/StumbleUpon (different report for each referrer) and the first page they visited was OU Home / study at OU / OpenLearn / LearningSpace.

Having run these reports I am able to get around 100 individuals in each area (they are just a number to me, I know nothing more than that about them) and I then run reports looking at their ongoing relationship with the OU. For example, I can see how many times people from each group come back to any OU page, how many clicks they make, how many pages they visit, their dwell time, whether they register or request a prospectus etc.

As I say, I have no idea what I’m going to find (it might be completely useless), but I think overall I’m interested to see how effective traditional online advertising is in generating engaged visitors (rather than just driving one-off visitors), vs those that arrive on various OU sites from social media spaces.

I’ll keep you posted on this; there aren’t going to be any quick answers though!

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