I’ve recently had to think about how to set measures and metrics for a corporate web estate that’s about the size of a small country.
Actually it’s not that big. I’ve worked on much larger corporate sites.
Up to now, the metrics the online team have been using are mainly to do with reach, with a little bit of conversion or task-success thrown in for colour (but not much).
These are the kind of metrics and measures someone devoted to vanity-publishing (like this blog) might be interested in (uniques, visits and downloads).
The people in the team are bright enough. But they don’t really care to know how to express engagement or anything else using an analytics tool. So they don’t bother to find out.
Agencies have tried for years to tell them they could do much more, but they don’t care.
So, the team’s been making use of about 10% of a leading analytics product (if that).
That makes me so mad. Lots of creative energy has gone into developing the analytics package — substantial time out of people’s lives — and this team isn’t even curious to find out what the result is of that creative energy.
Never mind the money they’re paying for the package.
Then they employed me, changed analytics package and set me the task of sorting out the business needs from this tool.
I read books. Got training. Played with the package. Thought, a lot, about the problems and possible solutions. And I just couldn’t believe how little curiosity the team has for this product.
How did that happen?
And I know it’s not an isolated case. I’ve seen this attitude towards HBX, Webtrends and others in several corporations.
Why? Is analytics really that boring?
What’s more, after several years of using this package, none of these people are actually able to manipulate it to produce dashboards, automated emailing of reports, etc.
They’re not even curious.
Shame, huh.
It’s not that team’s fault, necessarily. Well it is, but in mitigation I offer:
- Analytics has a bit of an image problem — it was invented by nerds for nerds at a time when nerds ruled the interweb world
- The product is intimidating and the metrics are ambiguous so need interpreting (too much work)
- It’s hard for your standard corporate online person who’s probably got no interest in online communications to movitate him/herself to read analytics books
- They won’t get a bonus for good analytics work (only for increased reach); but they will get a bonus for posting yet another article/image of their egotistical boss/C-class operator.
There’s so much more than can be said on this topic. Another time, perhaps. But for now, read Stern, Peterson, Kaushik, WAA and the rest for more on analytics.
