Poster4-07: INTEGRATION OF WEB ANALYTICS INTO GRADUATE MEDICAL EDUCATION
Jackson Massanelli, BS, Kevin W Sexton, MD, Chris T Lesher, BS, Hanna K Jensen, MD, PhD, M K Kimbrough, MD, Anna Privratsky, DO, Ronald D Robertson, MD, William C Beck, MD, John R Taylor, MD, Benjamin Davis, MD, Avi Bhavaraju, MD; University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences

Background: Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of websites’ and web applications’ usage data. While industry has historically used web analytics to understand and optimize usage, improve user engagement, and stimulate traffic, these tools are underutilized in Graduate Medical Education (GME). Bounce rate is a powerful web analytical tool defined as the percentage of users who visit a site then leave (i.e. bounce), without continuing to another page on the same site. It represents a website’s effectiveness in encouraging users to continue their visit. Our study investigated the use of web analytics to gauge the impact of our institution’s Department of Surgery website redesign project.

Methods: The redesigned website, developed in-house with direct input from surgeons, was launched on August 30, 2017. Using Google Analytics software, we measured website performance before and after implementation. Multiple factors were tracked including total users, new users, total sessions, sessions per user, pages per session, average session duration, total page views and bounce rate, with total page views and bounce rate as the primary outcome measures. Eight-month matched periods from January to August of 2017 and 2018 were compared to exclude the seasonal effect of GME interviews on website traffic. Continuous variables were evaluated using GraphPad Prism Version 8.0.0, La Jolla, California.

Results: Analysis using a non-paired Student’s t-test demonstrated a statistically significant increase for total page views (33,065 vs 81,852; p<0.0001) and decrease for bounce rate (50.70% vs 0.23%; p<0.0001). Total users, new users, total sessions, sessions per user, and pages per session showed improvement; average session duration was unchanged. Sub-group analysis showed that after the main page, the next three most frequently visited pages relate to GME programs in our department.

Conclusion: Web analytics are a quick and practical measure of a website’s efficacy. Our data suggest that a fresh and modern website significantly improves user engagement, web traffic, and throughput. Based on this data, we hypothesize that a polished and up-to-date website is essential for contemporary GME recruitment, will enhance engagement of residency applicants with our GME programs, and warrants further investigation.