Tuesday June 21, 2005

eMetrics Summit '05 The eMetrics Summit in Santa Barbara was a big hit.  I'm always amazed by the enthusiasm and openness that practitioners of Web Analytics have about their craft.  I think it's because in most cases web analysts do not have many local colleagues.  Even the largest companies seem to have just a few folks doing WA, so there is a great bursting of excitement when you get to talk to others who really understand and appreciate what you do all day.

There was way too much great information presented to try to summarize here, but here are my three top take aways.

Dashboards: Build 'em.  Evangelize 'em.  Use 'em. 
I have not been a big fan of emetrics dashboards in general as they have a tendency to gloss over issues with pretty charts with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one.   But I'm seeing now that there is a more subtle motive to distributing these dashboards.  They help create a data culture by keeping data in front of people's eyeballs.  Even if they do not always drive the action that you would like, you need to stay part of the dialog. 

Go where you're wanted.
Jason Burby of ZAAZ made a great point that you should start small, and target engagements and wins with groups who are already receptive to a data driven approach.  As these groups start showing results, other groups will see their success and want to jump on board.

Money Talks.  Traffic Walks.
Find a way to tie a real dollar value to actions on your web site.  It is much more effective to say "We are losing $250K per quarter in the conversion path from our product page to our checkout page", than saying "Our conversion rate is 3.2%", or worse yet "Our online store got 300K page views last month".  Monetizing web activities is easy to do for eCommerce paths.  But finding a way to show the dollar value of leads or registrations is the challenge you need to take on.
( Jun 21 2005, 10:38:49 AM MDT ) Permalink Comments [0]