If You Dont Get Value From Your Analytics Solution – Stop Paying!
April 2nd, 2009 by bparshallAbout two weeks ago I had the pleasure of meeting with a couple of agencies on the West coast; the topic? Web Analytics. The message I heard?
Customers aren’t getting enough value out of their web analytics solution.
In addition to my meetings I had the opportunity to see Eric Peterson present at SearchFest 2009, put on by Portland’s own SEMpdx community. In his presentation Eric introduced a “50/50” rule – essentially for every dollar you invest in web analytics technology you need to invest a dollar in people skills to effectively use the technology. Whether the ratio is correct or not is surely not the point.
Web Analytics is a discipline – a discipline that requires defined processes and governance, skilled people, and a culture committed to on-going refinement of methodologies. The technology should then support the discipline. So if you find yourself and your business saying that the value you’re getting for your web analytics solution can’t be justified by what you’re paying, stop paying! Just stop paying. Instead, invest the monies into your people and the processes that data can power.
WebTrends held a webinar with Ian Ayres (author of Super Crunchers and Engage keynote speaker) last week and when Ian was asked what is the biggest obstacle to putting super crunching to practice he responded (and I’m paraphrasing) ‘The willingness to take action with the data and the executive signoff to do so.’ When, and only when, your people find themselves stifled by the limitations of a free offering … when they can clearly demonstrate substantial ROI from an enterprise solution, that will be the indicator your company is ready for the capital investment. But until then, invest in your people.
To echo Eric’s words, web analytics is NOT easy. To think or say otherwise is to propagate the problem. We will keep working hard at WebTrends to make web analytics easier and as I see it, the long term growth of this industry will always be bound to its people’s talents.
Tags: analytics, goverance, methodolgies, people, process
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April 2nd, 2009 at 11:09 am
Great post!
We hear again and again that companies “aren’t getting enough value out of their web analytics solutions.” While clickstream and page view reports are great, they only tell a fraction of the story. The key to understanding visitors is in understanding their behavioral patterns – What does this sequence of clicks mean? Where will they click next? Will they make a transaction or click on an ad, or do they need more incentive? Behavioral analytics is the next step in understanding web traffic and building upon traditional web analytics.
Your post also highlights the value of using software-as-a-service for your BI and web analytics apps. With SaaS, you only pay for what you need and what you use. With traditional software, you’re usually stuck with a multi-million dollar app that only does a fraction of what you envisioned, and you can’t change because you spent another million dollars on hardware to support it.
April 2nd, 2009 at 8:36 pm
Barry,
I have been pondering what to say in comment all day but you did such a good job I am more or less at a loss for words. Weird, huh? I guess I’ll just comment that it is refreshing to read these words coming from a vendor, especially since if your customers took your advice en masse you would quickly go out of business. Bravo to WebTrends for valuing “the truth” over revenue!
Hopefully the “new WebTrends” we hear about next week has a solid plan to translate your words into actions and, more importantly, make your customers truly successful while they develop the discipline you cite.
See you in Sin City!
E.