Overview
About
Georgia FirstGen is a nonprofit organization that aims to provide access to higher education for students who are the first in their families to attend college. They had a previous website that was later refreshed and developed by Upsway Marketing to improve user experience and increase traffic to the website. This case study aims to analyze the data collected over 60 days for both the old and refreshed versions of the Georgia FirstGen website to identify the results, percentages, and trends that can be observed from the data.
Website Before
The original Georgia FirstGen Foundation website had several design and user experience issues that needed to be addressed. The homepage had dark overlays and lacked clear branding guidelines, which made it difficult for users to navigate the site. The lack of text readability on image sections and difficulty navigating the five dropdowns without parent pages also contributed to a poor user experience. The About page had similar issues, with no clear calls to action (CTAs) to join the team, listen to the podcast, or donate. The blog page lacked categorization, search functionality, and alt text and title case throughout.
Website After
Upsway Marketing's website refresh addressed the issues in the original website and added additional pages to serve the foundation's users better. The new homepage followed branding guidelines, with clear CTAs, quick links in the header and footer, a live chat feature, and the ability to subscribe and log in. The About page hosted the mission, vision, board members, leadership team, and an application page, with properly resizing sections and repeaters. The blog page added categorization, topics for multiple audiences, tags, search, subscribe, and comment functions. The user experience was improved with a consistent structure, printable pages, social share capability, and alt text. Additionally, the foundation added scholarships, events, donate, search results, and contact us pages to serve their users better.
Metrics
Georgia FirstGen Foundation's website needed an update to serve its users better and accomplish its mission of supporting first-generation college students in Georgia. In response, the foundation turned to Upsway Marketing for a website refresh. This case study will examine the impact of the website refresh on the foundation's unique visitors and site visits.
Unique Visitors
The unique visitor data for the old website shows that the number of unique visitors ranges from 0 to 12, with an average of 5.98 and a median of 5. The data is heavily skewed to the left, indicating more days with fewer unique visitors than days with a higher number. The highest number of unique visitors in the old website data is 12, which occurred twice during the 60 days.
On the other hand, the unique visitor data for the refreshed website shows that the number of unique visitors ranges from 7 to 146, with an average of 23.38 and a median of 20. The data is also skewed to the left, indicating that there are more days with fewer unique visitors than days with a higher number. The highest number of unique visitors in the refreshed website data is 146, which occurred on the first day of data collection.
Comparing the two datasets, it is evident that the refreshed website is attracting more unique visitors than the old website. The old website had an average of 5.98 unique visitors per day, while the refreshed website had an average of 23.38 unique visitors per day. This is an increase of 291.14%. Furthermore, the old website had a maximum of 12 unique visitors, while the refreshed website had a maximum of 146 unique visitors, a significant increase of 1116.67%.
Site Visits
The site visit data for the old website shows that the number of site visits ranges from 0 to 45, with an average of 12.25 and a median of 9. The data is also heavily skewed to the left, indicating that there are more days with fewer site visits than those with a higher number. The highest number of site visits in the old website data is 45, which occurred on day 27 of data collection.
The site visit data for the refreshed website shows that the number of site visits ranges from 7 to 158, with an average of 28.87 and a median of 26. The data is also skewed to the left, indicating that there are more days with fewer site visits than those with a higher number. The highest number of site visits in the refreshed website data is 158, which occurred on day 1 of data collection.
Comparing the two datasets, it is evident that the refreshed website is attracting more site visits than the old website. The old website had an average of 12.25 site visits per day, while the refreshed website had an average of 28.87 site visits per day. This is an increase of 135.02%. Furthermore, the old website had a maximum of 45 site visits, while the refreshed website had a maximum of 158 site visits, which is a significant increase of 251.11%.
Conclusion
The data collected over 60 days for both the old and refreshed versions of the Georgia FirstGen website shows that the refreshed website is attracting a larger number of unique visitors and site visits compared to the old website. The average number of unique visitors and site visits per day