If you are using a page tagging web analytics solution you must be aware that your information is being (in the most of cases) saved in a third party database, ergo if anything happen with your service provider or you just want to change it you will lose your historic information. Your historic information is all what you’ve got to plan your future action, so losing it will leave you almost blind. So one way for avoiding this risk is just implementing another web analytics tool in parallel. I mean, I’m not talking about training you and your team for
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ANALYZE SCENARIOS, NOT METRICS
If you want to really understand what it is happening in your project I recommend you to analyze de scenario and not the metrics per se. An interesting way to understand it is like when you are about to buy a new alarm for your home. The expert ask you all about your house, your family, if you have a dog or other pets, etc. After that tells you how many sensors (Measuring tool implementation) will your house (online project) need. After that each sensor will be measuring all the house movements and if a deviation appears you will be informed (alert). The above mentioned example shows
Continue readingDecision Making Scenarios vs Metrics
If you want to really understand what it is happening in your project I recommend you to analyze the decision making scenario and not the metrics per se. An interesting way to understand it is like when you are about to buy a new alarm for your home. The expert ask you all about your house, your family, if you have a dog or other pets, etc. After that tells you how many sensors (Measuring tool implementation) will your house (online project) need. After that each sensor will be measuring all the house movements and if a deviation appears you will be informed (alert). The above mentioned
Continue readingREPORTING LEVELS – LESS IS BEST
Companies are systems composed by different areas and levels. Those areas and levels perform a very important role in the organization that will (or not) allows it to achieve (or not) its objectives. Said that it is important to understand how vital is the information system flow. Even when some people may think that this post is mainly focused on big corporations, it is not. Information flows will determine how effective is the decision making process into any company no matter how bit it is. If you have a 10 persons company and the 10 are making decisions with a 30 pages report, then are all of
Continue readingTowards an effective Analytics Governance implementation
Managers are downing in data, that’s not new. Analytics governance is the solution, but how do we start? Companies are systems composed by different areas and levels. Those areas and levels perform a very important role in the organization that will (or not) allows it to achieve (or not) its objectives. Said that it is important to understand how vital is the information system flow. Even when some people may think that this post is mainly focused on big corporations, it is not. Information flows will determine how effective is the decision making process into any company no matter how bit it is. If you have a
Continue readingInformation vs insights. Towards a data driven culture
One of the basics topics in “data driven culture 101” is understanding that information is not useful itself. I know, you probably read the header and said, I know it is not, however sometimes the obvious it is not that obvious so let’s go for it. Information is just set of data ordered and processed in an specific way that make it relevant for decision making. However the human brain is responsible for the magic of understanding a situation using this information. A tool will never be able to do this. Humans performs very poorly with repetitive processes but are
Continue readingWHY INFORMATION DOESN’T MEAN INSIGHT
I know, you probably read the header and said, I know it is not, however sometimes the obvious it is not that obvious so let’s go for it. Information is just set of data ordered and processed in an specific way that make it relevant for decision making. However the human brain is responsible for the magic of understanding a situation using this information. A tool will never be able to do this. Humans performs very poorly with repetitive processes but are great creating things based on information understanding. To break the wall and invade the “Insights” arena it is
Continue readingA/B TESTING OR 360 VIEW? “BENEFITS” IS THE KEY
Identifying the type of information we are handling is the base for building decision-making scenarios with an acceptable level of risk. The type of information has nothing to do with the information source. The information source is just a mere “provider” but is not important at all once the information is already in your information system. For instance a Web Analytics tool could provide Behavioral information, however some of them could provide attitudinal information and it doesn’t make any change as long as you know which kind of information you are handling in every case. If your Web Analytics tool just provide Behavioral information (all the Web Analytics tools do it)
Continue readingIDENTIFYING SITE INTERACTIONS, THE KEY FOR OPTIMIZING
If you would like to optimize your site performance it is key to first identify the interactions that a user could generate on it. To do so you must forget about the holistic vision of systems by the systemic vision (highly recommended to read Peter Senge’s Fifth Discipline). The holistic vision says that in order to optimize each part of the system you need to optimize each part of the system while the systemic vision says that the important thing is to understanding and optimizing not the parts (or objects) but the interactions and not all the interactions but the one/s that are mainly constraining your website from a
Continue readingData insights – the hardest part of the Analytics Ninja work
Data insights is without any doubt the hardest part of the Analytics Ninja work. One of the critical parts of an Analytics Ninja work is related with the way humans interact. Analytics Ninjas must understand what people need to make decisions and what they don’t. However, this task that seems to be pretty simple, in fact it is not. First of all every human has a different mental model which process the information in a very particular way. The communication also differs based on gender, man and woman communicate in a very unique way. Culture is something that pushes the differences among people. People from Argentina
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