There are No Easy Questions

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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—the best way to use web analytics is to answer specific questions. Otherwise you’ll spend hours sifting through numbers and at the end of the day all you’ll be able to say is, “Well, that was interesting.”

But even the most innocuous question isn’t as easy as it sounds. Say the boss comes to you and asks you a question like this:

So we changed the image on the homepage, did the bounce rate go down?

Easy enough, right? Just open up Google Analytics, check the report for the days leading up to the change and then see what it was afterwards. Should be a simple matter of yes or no.

Wrong.

As much as your boss would like it to be that easy, it’s not. You have to look at all the moving parts on your site if you want to answer the question as honestly (and effectively) as possible. Some of the things you’d have to consider:

• Did we make other changes to the site the day we changed the image?
• What happened overall on the site that day?
• Was traffic any different that day? Did any high-bounce traffic get a spike (or a dip) that day?
• Did we send any emails that day that might pollute the data?
• Was our bounce rate trending in a certain direction to begin with?

You have to take all this stuff into consideration—you can’t just look at the overall bounce and answer yes or no. You’d be selling the analytics (and yourself) short.

This is why analytics is part science, part art. It’s not just about looking at the numbers and reporting on them, you have to use your brain too—that’s the fun part. It’s like being an investigative reporter—the best ones don’t just rattle off quotes from witnesses and police reports, they tell an engrossing story with all the information they’ve collected. That’s what keeps us coming back.

This is why it’s important that whoever is running the analytics be intimately informed about the site he/she is covering. If the person in charge of the analytics doesn’t know that an email blast is sent out every Wednesday the analysis will be wrong.

Of course the bounce went down! We always send emails on Wednesday and those people never bounce! Duh!

Does that mean you shouldn’t hire a consultant? No—it means the consultant needs to get to know the site as much as possible and constantly talk with someone who is knowledgeable. Your company should make it a top priority to give the consultant all the information he/she needs and assign someone to soak all this stuff up so that after a few consulting projects that person can run most of the analytics themselves. It should be part of the process.

Once you can run this stuff yourself, you’ll be in a much better position to spot anomalies. And if a huge problem comes up that you can’t solve—you can always bring the consultant back for help.

So next time you’re ready to shoot off a quick email to answer what looks like a simple question, step away from the keyboard and think about all the parts that need to be taken into account before you give your answer.

Image by Tallkev

This post was included in the Home Business Blog Carnival