Week+Five+5365


 * Site Launch and Beyond**

Google Site Search would allow us to create a search engine for our program website which would enable visitors to find documents and related terms quickly and easily. The cost is very affordable at an annual rate of $100. for a website of our size. Google allows you to customize the look and feel of the search results to match your website and to specify the sites or pages you want to include in your index. Users of Google Site Search stated that it was user-friendly, increased customer satisfaction rates, improved customer retention, and increased the average time that visitors spent on their site.  Google Analytics would enable us to analyze our website traffic data in order to attract more visitors, to see how they are actually interacting with our site and how effectively we are communicating our message. Google Analytics would also allow us to create custom reports that present the information we want to see in an organized way. The free version of Google Analytics is limited to 5 million pageviews per month, but users with a Google AdWords account have access to unlimited pageview tracking.

Google Site Search and Web Analytics sound like great tools to use to improve our web pages. I know that we have been analyzing the data provided to us on our program facebook page and the number of fans has almost tripled from where we were a year ago. We always see the number of interactions on our page increase tremendously when we post pictures of our events. Evaluating the effectiveness of our efforts is extremely important in order to meet the needs of our students in the best way possible. Google Analytics appears to be a great tool to use.

Our program director uses Survey Monkey to create customer satisfaction surveys in order to assess the effectiveness of the services that we provide. Since we are working with college students, sometimes the best way to contact them is through email and Survey Monkey allows us to send out the link to invite students to complete the survey. This allows us to include a message letting the participants know how long they can expect the survey to take. Students are more likely to honestly communicate ways that we can improve our services when they know that they can remain anonymous as opposed to completing a survey that is distributed to them in a group setting.


 * Week Five Assignment - Site Launch Planning**