In our community of practice meetings we often talk about the importance of setting good metrics and following up on those with analytics. Yet in practice, this seems very hard for most to do.
For many, web metrics and analytics is one of those tasks that continually gets pushed aside in the busy workday.
There are many reasons for never getting properly started. Some of the challenges I hear are:
- Our analytics system is not user friendly
- We are overwhelmed with data
- We use Google Analytics, but don’t really trust the numbers
These are really just excuses though. Focusing on the technical issues keeps you from addressing the real problem: The main reasons behind web managers not spending time on web analysis is because it takes just that – time!
We all need to prioritize, and between updating the content, changing the CMS, implementing a new design and managing relationships with vendors, editors and your own boss, taking time to look at the data just doesn’t seem important enough to be done right now.
And even though you try to remove less important things from your to-do-list (web analytics being one) you still end up working late hours and weekends on a website that is never going to be finished.
Yet, without utilizing the numbers you are treating the website as a hobby. You are working in the dark. You could easily spend 6 months defining and implementing the new design, the next 6 months adding content, only to find yourself arguing for another 6 months with those that don’t like the design or the content, and then having to start all over again. Did it make a difference to sales? Did it attract the right visitors? Was it worth the investment? You will never know.
As my colleague Peter Nissen blogged last week in Web teams, go meet your end-users, if you are very busy, it would seem smart to take a “launch and then learn” approach. The problem is that you never get to the learning part.
Web managers must insist on spending time on learning; through speaking with end users and through analyzing their web data. With every new project that is thrown at you, insist on taking the time to collect data first, that can be used as a benchmark comparing before and after. Without it, you will never learn.
Have you woken up to the importance of web analytics?
Hallie Wilfert August 20th, 2009 15:44
Web analytics is not hard, it just looks hard. I’m an information architect and I’ve been doing analytics work for years because it’s user research, 24/7. Since plenty of my colleagues balk at the idea of reviewing website statistics, I started evangelizing for using analytics in user experience design. This article I wrote gives people the quick and dirty facts on how to get started using analytics: http://web.fumsi.com/go/article/manage/3460
Jim Sterne August 21st, 2009 15:44
It’s easy to get web analytics reports and see if things are getting better or worse. But analysis is hard. Analysis means having an opinion, devising an hypothesis, running a test and convincing others that those results should be used to make business decisions.
So the problems lie in needing the technical skills to get good data and getting management support to not only spend the money doing so, but in supporting the use of the results. Technical, political and cultural problems are never easy. Hallie, you are very lucky to have mastered those.
Volker August 22nd, 2009 15:44
At the J. Boye conference in Philly I talked to someone who has as job role “web analyst” inside a producing company. Not a lot of companies implemented such a job role. Having a web analytics software is great but using it means also to allocate some ressources. And that is where most of the companies lack.
Another issue is the “overwhelming with data” as Dorthe explained. Let us think about an ERP system like SAP: these systems also have a lot of data and so your controlling department is also overwhelmed with data? I don’t think so. The difference: they define KPIs (key performance indicators) which are easy to understand, easy to report to the management and easy to remember. Of course you need to define different KPIs for your management and for other team members. An editor will be more interested in figuring out which topics get most of the readers while your manager might be interested in the rise of visitors in general.
But with web analytics we tend to look at details instead of defining some KPIs, setting goals and following them over months and years – and that might be because of the lack in ressources as discussed above.
» Jim Sterne on web analytics: Start with your goals! - J. Boye » Blog August 31st, 2009 15:44
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