Thursday, October 29, 2009

Analytics 2.0

A lot of these books have deceptively warm and inviting covers -- which they need ... since analytics and metrics are, by their nature, dry, tedious and cold topics ... important topics, but dry, tedious and cold!  There are some writers that I enjoy more than others -- one of those is Avinash Kausik, Analytics Evangelist for Google and author of the blog, Occam's Razor and presenter of videos on analytics.

The reason you should read this book is that Avinash really, really, REALLY gets that the GOAL is the highest net value to the business from web analytics implementation ... it's not about the feature of software packages or services, the esoteric intricacies of the technology ... it's about what it means to the business, how do the analytics drive a change in the website -- how does that change how we do business -- to make more money.  

That understanding is why, for every $100 spent on analytics, Avinash suggests that $10 be spent on analytics tools and vendor professional services [even free tools like Google Analytics still require the time of professional, even if the cost of that person's time is hidden] and $90 is required for “intelligent resources/analysts.”   Websites [for businesses that are serious about their web strategy] tend to be massively complex; although the analytics tools can capture all of the data from a complex site, they don’t actually tell you what to do.  Web analytics tools in the market spew out tons of data.  We don’t live in a simple Web Analytics 1.0 world anymore; it's necessary to make complex linkages.  We now have to deal with quantitative data, qualitative data, results of our multivariate experiments, and competitive intelligence data that might not tie to anything else.  Converting tons of data into insights also makes the linkages between the website and the people in the community or business -- this is about keeping up with the “tribal knowledge” in the community or business surrounding the website: unwritten rules, missing metadata, the actions of random people, and so on.  Real success is driven by the people you use -- you need an "real person" analyst with a planet-sized brain who both can use the web analytics tools AND go beyond the tools.  The book is worth it's cost for just that one insight -- my take:  hire the the smartest professional you can find ... then hire another one!   




It's advice that applies in many fields!


Suggestion:  Read SMARTER, read more, read faster.

The most important skill that you can have is to get really good at reading ...you might imagine that success is just a matter of busting your tail and working hard and listening ... those things are necessary, TOO ... but the reality is that readers will always be the leaders.  When you don't read, you follow.  Read better/ smarter by using something like GetAbstract and Google Books find books.; take advantage of  gadgets to build a page for you to scan to suggest BOOKS.

Blogs and other things you find on the internet is fine to scan, rapidly for good ideas -- but I am still an advocate of reading books [because the content is focused and deep; it must be well enough written by author qualified enough to be published by a company and edited by a professional].    $25 spent on the best book you can find any day is really cheap when you think about the insight a book furnishes ... actually $5000/year or so spent on a book almost every day would be a great investment if you could read that much ... the thing is that you should read that much ... it would prevent a lot of costly problems and furnish you with at least a few $5000 ideas in return.  If you have any wealth at all, I'm guessing that you've easily made [and probably lost] at least 10X or more than much in a year your stock market accounts.

Find tools to read smarter; make reading a core competency.  Do you already have a subscription to O'Reilly Safari?  If not, I'd suggest you check it out -- with an unlimited subscription you get over 14,000 recent, relevant titles; moreover, the mobile website can also be accessed using the web browser for the Kindle 1, Kindle 2, and the Kindle DX or on an Apple iPad. If you enjoy flipping through the pages of a "real" book ... I would definitely suggest picking up copies of used texts if they are are available, the principles that a good text like discusses does not really go out of date that soon ... of course, if this stuff is key to your business and you really shouldn't wait for used copies, I'd suggest that you head over to Amazon to browse the pages of Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity and buy it or maybe some the other texts suggested by the Amazon recommendation engine.