I just spent some time reading a good post from Avinash about the WAA Championship (http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/wachampionship/) and the results are in. Sadly my comapny was not in the top 4, but this gives us a great opportunity to explore new things and see this in a different light.
Avinash brings up some good points I know we’re all striving for in our analysis: how to make it better and more actionable, without giving a data flood to our clients. He also gives 7 tips on how to improve the quality of analysis that I know we all think about but may struggle to put into action.
Here is a link to the article, I highly suggest reading it as well as the winning entries: http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2008/07/consultants-analysts-present-impactful-analysis-insightful-reports.html
Notice a common theme among all of them… no scorecards! This might be a good approach if we’re looking to break out of the doldrums of scorecard data smog and really drive clients business forward. I often ask myself should we ditch Excel entirely for client facing documents. The more we allow excel to control our work, the more data-laden things can get. It’s the whole goldfish in a bowl thing…if we can start to change our own culture first, we can change our clients and push them forward!
Let me know what you think, I’m eager to hear your feedback.
Some use of Excel I think is fine, it is more, as you point out, that culturally "Excel" means a certain kind of approach and presentation style and value. That latter mindset has to change.
ReplyDeleteThe executives are so used to seeing data, data and data that it can be refreshing to see something else. : )
The other problem with the "data heavy" approach is that it can lull us into a false sense of security that we have given the client something of value. You take the data away and it forces me to think hard about the value I am delivering (and how much harder my job is!).
I like the term "scorecard data smog". I have to think of a clever place to use it (with your permission of course).
-Avinash.
A radical post indeed. Great to see! The direction I'd like to see analysts push is toward greater integration with the other disciplines.
ReplyDeleteIt's tempting to get comfortable (and Excel promotes this mindset) doing analytics in a bubble. We create the site, then we analyze it. You get a monthly report to show how it's going.
But clients are buying into that approach less and less, and the ability to produce analysis of onsite behavior is no longer a differentiator in the agency world.
We talk all the time about actionable analytics, and that's a powerful concept, but too much of the time, we follow up scorecards with recommendations that never get enacted.
There's a better story to tell, which is that our analytics are coupled with other services for continuous improvement: optimization, user research, usability, information architecture, design, and development. We don't sell recommendations, we sell the solutions to your problems.
The narrative is, our analytics, complemented by user research and usability, identify key areas of opportunity for improvement. We architect, design, build, and test solutions that measureably improve site performance relative to your goals.
It should be sort of easy to do. But it's definitely hard to collaborate, when you have so much data to crunch in your spreadsheet.