Plymouth University Signs Up With Matraxis to Deliver Webtrends Solution to Maximise Online Investment

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Matraxis

29 Oct, 2012, 14:00 GMT

PLYMOUTH, England, October 29, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

Plymouth University has underlined its desire to be one of the most progressive academic institutions in the UK by signing up with Matraxis to implement Webtrends Analytics on its internet site.

Matraxis is the sole preferred partner for Microsoft SharePoint in the UK with more than 10 years' experience of providing independent advice as a Webtrends reseller to more than 200 clients.

The new academic year coincides with the introduction of higher tuition fees for new undergraduates and the onus is on universities to operate even more efficiently.

As a Microsoft SharePoint user, Plymouth University will be using Webtrends to analyse activity on its main http://www.plymouth.ac.uk site in order to maximise the effectiveness of campaigns and other targeted online communications.

The university has a hugely diverse range of audiences - from current and prospective students and staff to alumni, business partners and other research organisations.

Marketing and communications and other staff will be able to track a campaign in its entirety and use the data from Webtrends to ensure that succeeding campaigns reach their target audiences even more effectively.

Rebecca Lee, Digital Manager, External Relations, said: "Like other universities, we need to make more intelligent use of technology. We want to be cutting edge, not catching up.

"Webtrends has a very user-friendly interface, which is critical in a large university where users are pressed for time and are of mixed abilities. But user access levels are customisable and being able to suggest additions and improvements was another plus. There's a support desk too, of course."

Plymouth, recently shortlisted for University of the Year in the annual Times Higher Education Awards, and awarded the Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education in February, is the latest in more than 200 organisations which have become Webtrends customers through Matraxis.

Rebecca added: "I found Matraxis more responsive to initial enquiries compared to other consultants and I received friendly, helpful, reassuring service. They were thorough in ascertaining our precise business requirements, tailored to our organisation. And they had knowledge of more than one solution so that gave us useful comparisons."

As well as tracking on the effectiveness of individual campaigns, such as registrations for an open day or downloads of a prospectus, the implementation will allow reporting on discrete sections of the website, on individual faculties, schools or other organisational units and on subject areas, such as business or medicine.

The contract with Plymouth University includes further development phases embracing social media statistics and segmentation by demographic to identify undergraduate, post-graduate, alumni and other groups. It will also analyse how visitors to the website engage with video and there will also be real-time chat functionality.

Director John Wood said: "Matraxis solutions are built to fit our customers' exact requirements and by using Webtrends we can always be sure that we will have the power and flexibility to address specific business needs.

"Rebecca and her colleagues have clear goals that they are aiming to achieve by implementing Webtrends. Initially Matraxis worked with the team at Plymouth to implement a simple pilot on a section of the website. This is an excellent way of very quickly understanding the vital reports to make a real difference to their business and operation.  

"We recommend this approach as a fast and practical first step in any new analytics project."

Case Study: Everyone who operates an internet or extranet knows they need web analytics - but surprisingly few know why, says John Wood, of leading UK web analytics solutions company Matraxis.

Web analytics has been with us for nearly two decades but the general lack of understanding of what it can do for business suggests that in many ways the industry is still in its infancy.

At Matraxis we have more than 10 years' experience of providing independent advice as a Webtrends reseller in the UK, serving more than 200 clients using Microsoft SharePoint.  

That's because it is about so much more than producing reports about web traffic. They have no value unless you know how to use them to get more out of your business.

What we do is to identify the 'killer' reports - and you're looking perhaps for only three. Give a client three reports to work with and they will use them effectively. Give them a hundred and they'll never look at them.

And so many organisations are doing nothing at all with their reports. They know that they need analytics tools, but they may not know why - let alone how to use them - which is where we come in.  

Webtrends is an essential analytical tool available 'out of the box' for MS SharePoint clients looking to derive maximum return on investment in intranets and internet sites. On intranets it helps users to monitor the effectiveness of internal communications, analysing authenticated users' activity to achieve cost savings and better productivity.

Webtrends can be found in more than 400 MS SharePoint installations worldwide and each of these can utilise more than 350 web tools. It also offers multivariate testing (MVT) for MS SharePoint web blocks, allowing multiple testing of different page formats visible to site visitors (http://www.whichmvt.com/discover/).

Our skills are in understanding the client's business, finding those few reports that are really going to make a difference to the way they do business online. And that's what makes the project worthwhile for someone like me who mixes experience of business with experience of analytics.

We talk to people - being careful not to use techno-jargon - and help them to see what they are trying to achieve. Sometimes it's the simple question 'What is your website for?' that unlocks the answer.  

From there we work together to determine the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in-line with the site goals, how we can measure them and best visualise/present the results so that insight is gained and fact-based decisions can be made.

Fortunately, the market is slowly changing and we are encountering clients who do understand what web analytics tools like Webtrends can do to drive their business objectives. Plymouth University, one of our newest clients, is a good example.

For a start, they had a very good idea of where they fit in to the Higher Education market.

They briefed us well and clearly had a good understanding of what they wanted and what they were trying to achieve. Implementation will be fairly straightforward in that we will be able to identify the reports that are going to make a difference.

We worked with the team at Plymouth to implement a simple pilot on a section of the website. This is an excellent way of very quickly understanding the vital reports to make a real difference to their business and operations.

Even with a knowledgeable client like Plymouth University there will be people in the organisation who will need educating about what a tool like Webtrends can do and how to best use it.

That's where we come in. We can have an organisation up and running with Webtrends in five to 15  days, whether implemented from the start of a deployment or as an upgrade.

But that is just the beginning. With intranets in particular, a sophisticated business tool like Webtrends depends on everyone within the organisation recognising that they have a part to play in maximising its effectiveness.

Adoption is therefore a key measurement, especially as global intranets are major investments, with an organisation's spend on measurement typically 5-10% of the installation cost.

Advancing users' awareness and knowledge throughout the business, not solely among those directly responsible for web analytics, is the goal. Ultimately it will be a rewarding one.

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Notes to Editors boilerplate

Matraxis is the leading UK web analytics solutions company for organisations looking to gain maximum return from their online investments. Matraxis has been a Webtrends trusted partner for 10 years and in that time has helped more than 200 Webtrends customers across a range of sectors including the Skills Funding Agency, Oxford University Press, The National Archives, Emerald Publishing, Surrey County Council and E.On to implement internet, intranet and extranet solutions, also providing valuable ongoing support.

Webtrends provides industry-leading analytics across mobile, social and web for more than 3,500 global brands including Lloyds Banking Group, Barclays, HSBC, ASOS, Orange, T-Mobile, Microsoft, BMW, Toyota, Play.com, AllSaints and The Telegraph.

Media Enquiries: Matt Anderson - Montage Communications +44(0)845-644-5404 / +44(0)7747048731, matt@montagecomms.com