This page concerns using the CMS to assist in issues around marketing. Topics covered:
Tracking pages and campaigns
As you will be aware, we can track what users are doing on our site using Google Analytics and Woopra.
A lot of things are set up to track by default, including
- Which pages people visit (and how many people)
- Where people came from
- Clicks on email links
- Clicks on CTAs (including the CTA text)
- Clicks on megamenu items
- Clicks on PDF download links
- Someone filling in a form on the site (however please see below….)
Whilst the ‘out of the box’ tracking will meet most needs, if you are interested in reporting on something very specific it is a good idea to speak to the Digital Services Team in advance as we may be able to configure the tracking to make reporting easier.
A good example of this would be forms – whilst we track form submissions by default, isolating your specific form in the reporting is ‘a bit of a pain’ – it is much (much) easier to set up tracking for your form so that you can instantly access it via the reporting.
It should also be noted that setting up tracking retrospectively is not possible (hopefully for obvious reasons…) therefore please let us know before your campaign*/event etc goes live.
*If you are wanting to track a campaign, don’t forget to put trackable links on your adverts! This can be done using the UTM builder: https://ga-dev-tools.google/campaign-url-builder/
Social media image
Some pages have the option to add a social media image – this enables you to specify what image is used when you share the page on social media. If the page does not have this option ask the web team if it is possible to add it.
You will find the field towards the bottom of the metadata.
You will need to prepare the image file and publish it.
To create the image: find the image you want to use in the CMS, click on it and click Create Variation. Then if you drag on it to make a cropping box of any random size, you can then change the numbers on the right-hand side so the cropping box becomes 300 x 157 pixels. Then move it around to the right position and save it. You’ll need to re-edit the variation afterwards so you can approve it.
Then you paste in the URL of the image location. The page will then need to be published for this to work.
Tracking links in print
With the recruitment review (and general best practice) it’s important that we are able to track all of our activities – and print is no exception.
There are a couple of ways this needs to happen – but in short we need to find a way of adding UTM campaign parameters to the end of the url.
These can be easily created with the free utm builder: https://ga-dev-tools.google/campaign-url-builder/
Here is an example of a url with them added:
https://www.brighton.ac.uk/studying-here/fees-and-finance/brighton-boost/index.aspx?utm_source=postcard&utm_medium=print&utm_campaign=boostmailer&utm_id=boost
Depending on the nature of the print – there are a couple of ways this needs to happen:
Use case 1: A QR code (1 step process)
This is the easiest to achieve as it is simply a matter of making sure the QR code destination url has UTM parameters on it.
Please note: It is not possible to add UTMs retrospectively – this MUST happen before it goes to print.
Use case 2: A url not using a QR code on printed material (2 step process)
In this use case, a url is shown that the user would need to manually type into the browser.
It’s standard practice in these cases to create a short url (so its easy to remember and type) BUT for tracking purposes there is an additional step.
It is not enough to create the short url, in addition a server redirect needs to be put in place that grabs the short url and redirects it to the destination url with UTM parameters added to it:
User types short url -> server receives request for short url -> server redirects user to destination with UTM parameters -> tracking is now possible.
A member of the web team would need to assist with step 2.
For webteam – how to add server redirects
So in use case 2 above, we need to do 3 things:
- Create a short url (what appears in print)
- Create a version of the destination url with UTM parameter’s
- Redirect 1 to 2 with a server redirect.
1. Create a short url
In this method, this is done as part of the server redirect (see below) – you do NOT need to create an alias for this method.
Create a version of the destination url with UTM parameter’s
It may be that the UTMs are provided to you by a member of the campaigns team, but if not they can be added with the UTM builder here: https://ga-dev-tools.google/campaign-url-builder/
Redirect 1 to 2 with a server redirect.
To create a server redirect head in the content types and entries section of the CMS, then click the settings cog and then ‘redirects’:
Click on ‘New redirect’ and then fill in:
- The source – this is the path of the short url – for eg /myshorturl
- The destination – this is where the user ends up with the UTM parameters on it
And that’s it! Now print links can be tracked in our web analytics 🙂