Wednesday January 03, 2007

Limits of Web Analytics I had a discussion the other day with a colleague who was somewhat frustrated that I couldn't tell him why the conversion rate through a particular process had slipped after he launched a new design. 

It was clear from the data that there has been a fall off, and we were even able to point to a particular page where users fell out of the process.  Click path reports told us where the users were going.

"Thanks, Paul, but why are they doing that?  That's not what we expected them to do."

"Well, Joe, Web Analytics are voyeuristic, not omniscient." 

I'm not sure he liked that answer, but it was true. We can observe what people are doing, but we can only guess at why.

This is the stage, of course, where team work and collaboration kick in.  We looked at the page and postulated a few possibilities, but really the experts in design and usability take over here.  I offered to help run some A/B tests to validate design tweeks, but beyond that, I had to accept the limits of my abilities.

( Jan 03 2007, 10:02:12 AM MST ) Permalink