Here’s how MBIE (Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment) and Lanalytics worked together to deliver GA4 training to 20 of their people, including performance insights from their Building Performance website that we uncovered in the sessions.
Pamela Minnoch and the team have been brilliant to work with, they’ve given clear direction and been engaged from the start. It was satisfying to build on the strong Google Analytics knowledge within the team, and bring the beginners up to scratch.
Starting out: MBIE GA4 needs
Pamela Minnoch got in touch with me wanting training for 20 of her MBIE colleagues. She gave me a strong idea of what her team needed from GA4, which was to:
- encourage consistent data use across the organisation
- create a good user experience and seamless user journeys
- use data to inform decisions and prioritise work
- give the team skills to measure different MBIE websites.
GA4 survey responses
I sent out a survey to everyone who wanted to take the training. The survey helps me to understand:
- individual needs for the training
- what skill level to pitch the training
- how the team use GA4 data already, and how the training can build on current use.
Custom GA4 training package
I created a couple of package options based on the survey feedback, and sent these to Pamela and the team to choose from. When we got the go ahead we decided that data from the Building Performance site was best to use for the training.
MBIE chose to hold their training online, and we booked in two identical courses with ten people in each, with each course consisting of 2 x 2.5 hours sessions.
I also created custom reports that they can access within GA4, based on their survey needs.
What we found in the data
Content performance
When we looked at content performance we found that a couple of pages were getting the most traffic.
The Building Code Compliance page is a navigation page, and data showed that people found an onward journey by clicking to lower-level pages.
The E2 external moisture page is a destination page, and data showed that users were engaging with the page as intended by clicking on external links and downloading files.
Traffic sources
Data showed that many people were coming straight from Google to deep-level destination pages, bypassing the home and browse pages.
Because MBIE had their Search Console account connected, we were able to see the Google searches leading people to the site. Many were acronyms, suggesting an informed audience.
Location
The top page from Auckland in January covered guidance for pool owners. It’s no surprise that this was not the top page for Wellington users, there must be a lot of leaf scooping for pool owners here.
Audience filters
When we applied Comparison filters for ‘mobile’ and ‘desktop’ audiences to all the standard reports, we saw distinct audiences emerging.
Mobile users are more likely to be early-on in their building performance journey, and may be DIY-ers. They search for high-level terms like ‘building code’ and ‘building act’. They’re more likely to visit the site on the weekends than desktop users, and one of the top referral sites was Trade Tested which is a home improvement store.
It looks as though the desktop audience uses the site as part of their job – their usage spikes on weekdays. They’re more likely to use acronyms like ‘nzbc’ and ‘e2’ which indicate an existing knowledge of the content.
Wrap up
We’re holding a follow-up user insight session to answer any questions and help the team further along their data journey. As a government entity they can’t endorse private companies so I can’t share their feedback, but I trust that the team will use their GA4 skills to really make measurable improvements to the MBIE websites.
Photo by 1981 Digital on Unsplash