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UCAS Website Visits Soar Yesterday - Ranking at 37 Overall in the UK

August 18, 2006

Yesterday, students up and down the country received their A Level results and while the news is focussed on controversy over the record number of A grades, market share of UK visits to the UCAS website soared as disappointed students entered clearing.

The UCAS website became the 37th most visited internet site yesterday based on share of UK visits, up from #103 on Wednesday, receiving one in every 400 UK internet visits went to the site yesterday. The site's share of visits more than tripled in one day and trailed Wikipedia, the #1 ranked Education site yesterday by only 5% of category visits.

UCAS Site Vistis.png

There are a number of commercial links from the UCAS homepage to banks, retailers and services offering help in selecting courses. Here's a table showing the top 15 downstream sites from the UCAS site yesterday:
UCAS Downstream .png

The first commercial link on the UCAS site, to Undergrad 06, gets the most attention, hands down. The site ranked as the #3 downstream site from UCAS yesterday, receiving 3.49% of the site's visits. Is this because of the offer or the placement? The answer is, probably both.

It's interesting that the visual banner ads from HSBC, Unite and The Open University didn't attract as many clicks as the text ads of Laptop Direct and Undergrad 06. HSBC ranked at #93 in downstream sites from UCAS, Unite at #58 and The Open University at #108. Laptop Direct came in at #21.

Analysis of clickstream data can offer insight into the behaviours and preferences of consumers. Advertisers trying to maximise effectiveness of online advertising can look at downstream from partner sites and see which sites are getting more traffic. Analysing the content and placement of successful adverts can offer valuable insight on what works.

Posted by Heather Hopkins at 11:09 AM | (0) | (0)
In Categories Education