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Algonquin College
200+ dashboards, one source of truth.

ClientAlgonquin College, Ottawa
My roleLed the project end to end: scope, implementation, results
Year2023
ScopeGA4 · Tag Manager · Looker Studio · Training
Algonquin College

Overview

Algonquin College needed to move from Universal Analytics to GA4. More importantly, their 100+ campus teams needed to be able to open their data and understand it, without learning a new platform.

At a glance

200+custom dashboards
180sub-sites tracked
10kpages covered

The challenge

  • Views disappeared. Every campus team had its own focus, organized as GA3 “views”, which don’t exist in GA4.
  • Scale. A multi-site with 180 sub-sites and 10,000 pages, each with its own goals.
  • Adoption. Teams had to access and interpret their data without getting overwhelmed by a new system.

My role & approach

I scoped and quoted the project, then led strategy, implementation and reporting from start to finish.

Phase 01

Strategy outline

  • Mapped every team and the pages they needed to analyze, which set the number of dashboards
  • Defined the goals and conversions that mattered to each team, and validated them with stakeholders
Phase 02

Data collection setup

  • Installed and integrated GA4, Google Search Console and Google Tag Manager
  • Basic tags that extended GA4’s defaults, e.g. video progress at 25, 50 and 75%
  • Custom tags tracking every form by name and by the page it was submitted from
Phase 03

Reporting dashboards

  • Branded Looker Studio dashboards, one per team, pre-filtered to their pages and conversions
  • Cross-filtering to drill into traffic sources, events, conversions and content performance
  • Explainer text on every page so occasional users remember what each metric means

Results & impact

  • Accessible data. Teams open a dashboard instead of navigating GA4.
  • Minimal training. Dashboards were built to be self-explanatory, with definitions inline.
  • Data-driven teams. Staff now use the dashboards for planning, site optimization and decisions.

“We were incredibly impressed by the talent, expertise, dedication and professionalism they brought to the project.”

Ashleigh · Algonquin College

In short

One strategic project changed how hundreds of people across the college work with their web data.