The Problem with Web Reporting
We've all certainly run reports about online activities. For a select few, we've spent time running reports about offline activities. But of all of the hours spent in generating these mission critical reports, how many were used to drive organizational change?
The web analyst really does have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to web reporting. It was my friend and mentor Matt Berk that said this in 2002.
Let's take a look at the standard reporting palette:
How do you manage that??!
With so many reports and so much literature surrounding Web Analytics, there is one thing that still persists!
Read on.
I suspect that many analyst struggle with helping organizations define business success. This simple but necessary exercise is the reason the field is so disproportionately split and why conversion laggards, if lucky, ineptly drive success just 2% of the time.
One of my favorite analysts, "Ashish Braganza' astutely said, "Ross, most organizations do a great job at spending money, but a horrible job at conversion".
Why do conversion funnels consistently look like Martini glasses and yet, we keep on reporting and we keep on spending!
There are two camps:
We have organizations that report (99.5%) and the compelling few that seek change (.5%).
The fact that few organizations seek change means that most online managed channels simply lack strategy! Now just imagine that! Here's an industry that generates billions in spending, but lacks any fundamental strategic principles?
To frame it all up, how do you define metrics and KPIs without understanding what your business goals are? If you aren't aligning your projects towards these goals, what are you really doing besides wasting resources and maligning talent?
Reporting is not analytics and analytics is not a substitute for strategy.
I want to leave you with this and hopefully you will learn from the mistakes of the many.
The web analyst really does have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to web reporting. It was my friend and mentor Matt Berk that said this in 2002.
Let's take a look at the standard reporting palette:
- Page Views
- Visitors
- Referrer Traffic
- Commerce (cart views, cart abandonment, checkouts, orders)
- Organic Searches (branded, categorical, local, etc)
- Internal Site Search (failed searches, null searches)
How do you manage that??!
With so many reports and so much literature surrounding Web Analytics, there is one thing that still persists!
Read on.
I suspect that many analyst struggle with helping organizations define business success. This simple but necessary exercise is the reason the field is so disproportionately split and why conversion laggards, if lucky, ineptly drive success just 2% of the time.
One of my favorite analysts, "Ashish Braganza' astutely said, "Ross, most organizations do a great job at spending money, but a horrible job at conversion".
Why do conversion funnels consistently look like Martini glasses and yet, we keep on reporting and we keep on spending!
There are two camps:
We have organizations that report (99.5%) and the compelling few that seek change (.5%).
The fact that few organizations seek change means that most online managed channels simply lack strategy! Now just imagine that! Here's an industry that generates billions in spending, but lacks any fundamental strategic principles?
To frame it all up, how do you define metrics and KPIs without understanding what your business goals are? If you aren't aligning your projects towards these goals, what are you really doing besides wasting resources and maligning talent?
Reporting is not analytics and analytics is not a substitute for strategy.
I want to leave you with this and hopefully you will learn from the mistakes of the many.
- Draft a business objective (even one puts you well ahead of your competition).
- Establish the metrics to support the measurement of those objectives.
- Define your KPIs.
- Generate expected values (Run forecasting models with a few years of data).
- Define your business goals (10% increase in Q3 subscriptions, 15% increase in online bill pay adoption, or a 40% increase in yearly online sales).
- Seek change (A/B split, multivariate testing, behavioral segmentation)
- Monetize your efforts (not every task put before you deserves your full attention. You need prioritization)
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