By Kaare Bøje
The last couple of weeks I needed to update my knowledge regarding web analytics (WA from now on).
I’ve been reading too much about WA and at some point it really bored me as some experts tend to make it more than it is. We are talking WA, not rocket science. I think some of the leading figures out there only make it hard to understand WA, so that they can be seen as gurus or the only solution to interpret simple data.
Since the dawn of internet people have tried to figure out how to secure and use data from visitors.
In the beginning (mid nineties) people were like: “Yes!! I got 200 visitors yesterday”, but what did the visitors actually do on the website?
Today it’s a bit more complicated, but it all comes down to hits, visitors on your website, time spent on website, and the pages they use – the whereabouts of your visitors.
With one hand in my pocket and a cigarette in the other I claim to be a WA expert too. It seems we are all experts nowadays, just like young people buying DJ merchandise and accessories, and suddenly they become DJs, by the looks.
WA is simply how to use the data you extract from WA software in your business.
It’s all quantitative data, easy to extract and use for whatever purpose you might find worthy.
Another thing which makes me wonder is that some WAs actually talk/write about quantitative data as if it’s the only true source available. What happened to qualitative data? Is it forgotten because it actually is hard to get qualitative data from internet users? I once read:
“it’s hard to produce quality analysis based only on quantitative data”
Quantitative data, such as age, gender and location is more or less standard information you obtain from your visitors on a website nowadays, and it’s easy to interpret. But what happens after? For example, when purchasing a new computer, how does the customer “feel”? It’s hard to get an answer on those open questions when only looking at quantitative data, although it can contain extremely valuable information.
Obtaining qualitative data can be done with questionnaires, but let’s be honest, most people actually don’t care about this as long as their product works. Using competitions and the likes can force people to interact, but then again, you as a company push them to participate and that will definitely affect the result.
Since Google acquired Urchin back in 2005 and released their highly acclaimed WA software Google Analytics, people have been all over the subject trying to make it into a business and they succeeded in a way I didn’t see coming. SEO and SEM are here to stay and the business hasn’t peaked yet, please keep in mind that SEO and SEM is part of your WA not vice versa.
Throughout the last 3-4 years, people have been talking about redefining and using the “Maturity Model” from Gartner. Some with great success and some have been inventing new models, which makes it even harder to understand WA. I broke it down for an easier interpretation—WA is these 4 keywords:
Define – Measure – Analyze – Optimize
WA is measuring the visitors behavior on a website. It measures number of visitors, time spend on site and the bounce rate (was it a fault that they entered your site or not?).
These 4 keywords and their meaning can easily be adapted into any business.
If you want an analyst to analyze your data (translating it into something measurable and understandable), then you should get a person within communications to interpret the data for you. You need the key figures that are usable for everybody in the company. But when it comes to implementation of the data or optimizing your website, you need an IT specialist who does what he is told.
WA is a soft science involving mostly marketing, management and the IT department. Together they must make the data accessible and reliable to everyone. WA data is (or should be) fact-based, which can lead to an improvement of online activities and make the website better for your visitors if you do want them to come back.
WA is like playing detective, finding the right spot to obtain information about your visitors. Step in your audience’s shoes, understand them and their goals. Customer satisfaction should be your number one priority.
Can we get more out of the data than we already do? Digital eavesdropping combined with data mining has been around for some years now, but it is still a shady business. It’s on the verge of becoming a criminal act if you ask me. It’s all about how to specify individuals from mass collected data, so that you can reach or uncover a target audience more precisely.
With true data mining and eavesdropping, you will be able to get somewhat qualitative data. It depends on how you do it and how far you are willingly to take the observation of end users.
It is recommended that an individual is made aware of the following before data are collected:
The purpose of the data collection and any data mining projects, how the data will be used, who will be able to mine the data and use them, the security surrounding access to the data, and in addition, how collected data can be updated.
Even though I started out by claiming my expert title within WA, please keep in mind that the resources and references I used in this article are built mostly upon the types of people I denigrated in the beginning of the article. I really do admire and respect the work of Eric T. Peterson and Avinash Kaushik, but wanted to keep it simple and not make it into something which it’s not.
Let WA data guide your decisions, but never let it get in the way of a great idea. Sometimes you need to experiment and thus open new doors. It’s called development. Never underestimate the power of human knowledge and creative thinking.
References and Resources:
Jim Sterne
Eric T. Peterson
Bill Gassman
Avinash Kaushik
Stephane Hamel
Dave Chaffey
Gartners Maturity model
Wikipedia
Google/Bing
Pictures from sxc.hu
