Link Web Data to Business Strategies
Here as an obvious statement — The web data you pay attention to should link to business strategies. While the statement is obvious the application can actually be quite challenging. I intend to explore the entire process (yes, it is a cyclical process, not a single event) of linking data to strategies and vice versa through this blog — but not today. Today I just want to hit a few of the assumptions required before you can do ANYTHING with this simple concept.
First, you have need to know your business strategies. That should be obvious, but quite honestly, it is the most overlooked step in the entire process. Lots of people jump into web analytics excited about knowing where their visitors come from and how long they are on the site with no thought about whether it even matters to their business.
The second thing you need to have is a basic understanding of what your web data really is. For example, does your web analytics solution report bounce rate as single page visits or visits less than a specified time on the site (in Google Analytics it is single page visits). There are a lot of other examples I will explore when I get into a more detailed post on this subject.
Finally, you need to have an idea of cause and effect, and I say idea because you are going to test it. The scientific method is the best way to evaluate cause and effect. The problem is, much like scientific theories, you can never prove that something is correct only that your assumption is not correct. So, failure in your cause and effect journey is a good thing, because it eliminates possible scenarios.
Once you have (1) defined business strategies, (2) a good understanding of web data, and (3) an idea of what drives success in your company you are ready to link your web data to your business strategies. Easy, huh?!
