Link is Scotland’s leading international education charity, working to improve the futures of people living in some of the most marginalised communities in the world.
With projects in Malawi, Uganda, Rwanda, and Ethiopia, Link’s vision is of a world where every child has the right to quality education.
Following a recent website relaunch and with an upcoming Christmas fundraising campaign, Link were keen to improve their data analytics and build the foundations for getting quality insight from their data.
What did we do?
- Complete audit of Google Analytics (GA) and Google Tag Manager (GTM) on Link’s website.
- Set up a range of GA goals and custom events to measure KPIs.
- Support on UTM link tracking for campaign attribution.
- Created interactive dashboards in Google Data Studio.
What was the outcome?
- Link now have a reliable, clean implementation of Google Analytics they can depend on for ongoing analysis and evaluating future campaigns.
- With an enhanced UTM process and a way to integrate CRM data with the website dashboard, Link have a fuller picture of channel attribution and their overall KPIs.
- Data Studio reports will help stakeholders to view crucial data in one place, interacting with and querying the dashboards where needed.
Daniel has been a huge help to us at Link. Having recently launched a new website, we worked with Daniel to audit our digital analytics needs and capabilities.
Daniel was extremely flexible and responsive to our situation. He worked with us to deliver a package of work that was bespoke to our needs, in line with our budgets, and would give us maximum impact for our current situation. He kindly accommodated our tight timelines and always turned work around quickly and efficiently.
As a charity, we really appreciated his expert subject knowledge in our field as well as his clear expertise in analytics and we wouldn’t hesitate to work with him again in the future.
Audit of the analytics setup
A core part of our offering is a comprehensive review of the Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager setup. This also touches on other platforms that can be integrated with GA, such as Google Search Console and Google Ads.
The aim is to ensure that we have a clean, reliable analytics setup, which serves as the foundation for all reporting, analysis, and optimisation work.
We carried out priority fixes and enhancements to the analytics setup, and provided a roadmap for further improvements to Link’s analytics ecosystem.
Custom Google Analytics measurement
Link did not have much in the way of custom tracking in place on their website but needed to be able to evaluate various KPIs. These included key fundraising and interaction points across the website. We also wanted to measure “softer” user engagement, such as CTA button clicks, document downloads, page scrolling, and video plays.
We worked with Link to understand their requirements and gain a deep knowledge of their website. We were then able to translate these into goals and custom events for ongoing reporting in GA.
Campaign links & attribution
Effective analytics is an ongoing process, requiring buy in from various stakeholders to be successful.
A key factor in analytics data quality is the use of UTM parameters for tracking campaign links. These tell Google Analytics through which platforms, campaigns, and marketing channels users reach the website. The responsibility for managing UTM parameters usually lies with marketers or content creators.
We worked with Link to help them understand the best use of UTMs and created a tracked link generator to support them in this continuous process.
Dashboard reports for stakeholders
Google Analytics can be overwhelming and difficult to use for many people, even analysts with specialist knowledge.
Google Data Studio is a business intelligence platform that allows us to create attractive visual reports from data. We can work with many data sources and pull them into a single report. For example, with Link we provided a Google Sheet for them to export CRM data, which is connected to Data Studio and will display reports alongside a suite of Google Analytics data.
Link wanted to help many stakeholders engage more readily with website data. Working closely together to refine the requirements and presentation, we created a high-level report for wider distribution up to board level, and a more detailed report for communications and fundraising stakeholders.
The ultimate purpose of all the analytics setup is to get useful insights from the data, and we hope these dashboards will be a key contributor to Link’s work.
It’s been a pleasure working with Lyndsey and Link Education – particularly satisfying to help support the work an international development organisation with such an admirable vision.
We hope to continue working together and that our analytics groundwork will bring value for months and years to come.
If you'd like a consultation about how I can help your charity or organisation with data analytics, you can find me on LinkedIn, or email me at [email protected]
