Web Tools & Resources

Web Tools & Resources

 

Discover the best web tools and resources available to campus marketers, to improve your website's performance. From tracking analytics and visualizing data, optimizing SEO, usability testing and accessibility.

Data & Web Analytics

Google Analytics & Tag Manager

These powerful data reporting tools provide critical insights into web activity, user behavior, and conversions. The university’s Comprehensive GA/GTM account allows for easy tracking and reporting, you’ll have access to custom event tracking on key metrics , allowing you to make informed decisions on future strategies:

  • Page-specific clicks (to inform page-specific performance)
  • Clicks in the main navigation
  • Apply clicks
  • Submitted applications
GA4 user interface

Are you using a Quickstart 2 website?
You’re all set!

  • GA4 tracking enabled
  • GTM enabled by default (for the Comprehensive GA account)
  • Custom event tracking

Not on Quickstart, but interested in custom event tracking?

  • Add the GTM container to your site
  • Request access to the Comprehensive GA account to view performance

Information on using UTMs and tracking paid media campaigns can be found on the Digital Advertising page.

Looker Studio

Looker Studio (formally known as Google Data Studio) is a free reporting tool that allows you to create comprehensive reports and dashboards, in a visually-pleasing way.

If you’re using the Quickstart CMS, or are added to the Comprehensive GA account, the Arizona Universal GA Dashboard provides a high-level look into each subdomain. This is also an excellent tool to share real-time analytics to stakeholders, and schedule a regular email delivery of the dashboard to your web team.

GA4 Dashboard

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is another vital tool that provides insights into SEO performance and Google’s SERP (search engine results page). This is also where you’ll upload your website’s sitemap once it’s live.

Once you’ve verified your website in Search Console and you’ve uploaded the sitemap, you’ll receive alerts on any SEO errors that Google detects on your site, such as:

  • 404 errors, page not found
  • Redirect errors
  • Duplicate pages

For a comprehensive look into SEO, here are a few resources:

45%+

of traffic to Arizona.edu is
organic search

User-Testing & UX Research

User-testing and UX research are essential components in creating an effective web strategy.

Userlytics

The Web Experience team leverages Userlytics, an enterprise-level user-testing platform, to conduct a variety of tests including:

Unmoderated, or moderated, recordings of participants reviewing your website, prototype, app, etc.

Example questions:

  • “What is this page for, what can you do here?”
  • "What, if anything, is missing from this page?"

Unmoderated, or moderated, recordings of participants, ensuring users can complete primary tasks on your website, prototype, app, etc.

Example questions:

  • “You’re interested in tuition for the upcoming semester, where do you go to find this information?”
  • "You now want to apply, but are curious what information you need for the application. How do you find this?"

Ask people to group cards into categories, and use the results to guide your information architecture, content hierarchy, etc. This can be done in an open, closed, or hybrid card-sorting exercise.

Tree testing helps you validate your website's information architecture (IA). By asking users to complete tasks and click on labels to navigate, you'll evaluate how findable your content is.

A competitive analysis, or comparative test, will task users with comparing similar pages (ex: Homepage) or web experiences (ex: public university's News site) in one test.

 

Userlytics Professional Services

Userlytics has a professional services team that offers a suite of services, from providing test plan templates, guidance on which test is best for your use case, to running and analyzing the tests for you. We'll be adding pricing information shortly.

Interested in signing up for testing with Userlytics? Contact Tom McCarthy on the Web Experience team.

Userlytics test screen

User Testing Templates

User-testing templates are also available through the Web Experience team. To access these, open the Google doc and make a copy before editing for your own needs.

Web Homepage

Competitive Comparison

Campaign Landing Page

Accessibility

Note: All Quickstart components have been optimized for accessibility. Visit Quickstart.arizona.edu/best-practices/accessibility-guidelines for more information on creating accessible content.

With accessibility being a top priority, DubBot is a university provided tool for crawling websites and providing accessibility reports. To request access, complete the IT Accessibility Consultation Request Form.