It may seem a very strange thing to think that data is a downfall of analytics, surely there can’t be such a thing as too much data about your website…? The long and short of it is that in many situations, people in organisations like to surround themselves with figures, producing reams of reports rather than any actionable insights. If you were to ask which metric is the most important, they probably wouldn’t be able to tell you.
An important metric is one that you can make a difference with, one you can hang your hat on. There should always be a gauge of ‘SO WHAT’ with every metric, if you can’t do anything with it, then why are you using it to measure the performance of your business.
My recommendation would be to define business success, have approximately 5 KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) that are used across the business and use these to drive the business forward.
Having soooooo much data available in analytics tools can result in unfocused investigation. In a situation like this, an end user might have drifted off into a data trance, following a route to insight that is insignificant in the grander scheme of things. The use of analytics tools should always be structured and disciplined, there should be a question you have in mind at a top level rather than just looking at reports.
In summary:
- Define what is success.
- Have a handful of actionable metrics
- Stay focused
- Ask SO WHAT?
Why not contact me today to improve your website conversion using actionable insights not just numbers.
