Analytics, focus on people?
Posted on | May 7, 2006 |
In our daily lives we interact with people, family, friends, clients, partners, and many others. Every one of us has a different mental model built by biologic, linguistic, cultural, and personal factors. This means, for instance, that people from the same cultures have similar mental models, but it doesn’t mean that they have the exact same mental model; they just share more things in common.
So people are different from culture to culture—even each person is different—and they behave in a singular manner in specific situations.
However, professionals from different areas forget to take into account human behavior while they implement new specific techniques.
In my specific industry it is normal see professionals talk about web analytics as something totally separated from humans, even when they are mostly human-based (this may sound stupid but that’s way it is). Last week I was reading different texts about web analytics and their metrics, and I found it so interesting to read things such as, “this metric measure this, and this metric measure that”, or “when the visitor does this, then do that, and if we do this then we will convert the visitor into a buyer.” How can we say that? Just because on one specific website—that has a particular dynamic, target group, and objective—things are set up in a particular way, does that mean that on all other sites—even with a similar target group, dynamic and objective—results will follow in the exact same way? Furthermore, information is tracked automatically using webstat software.
Is it logical to think that using metrics developed for a different website (with specific dynamic, target, objectives, etc) and tracking the information on that site that wasn’t even planned for our own website (even worse if we get into the fact that there aren’t two different webstats programs that track the data in similar way) is going to achieve results for our website? I guess not. The best medicine for cancer will not cure a simple bad cold just because it wasn’t created to do that.
I think, and this is just my point of view based in my mental model, that if we want to have a successful website the first things we should understand are these: What is the objective of the site? What is our target group? How does this target group behave in different circumstances? Are there any factors of their mental model that they share? (There is other information we need to know but in this case I’d like to focus on just these).
It is important to do tag architecture, situating sensors in precise places assuring the tracking of qualified information. Definitely the fewer the better; the internet is home to an infinite amount of data, and it is easier to get a bunch of data, than a bit of information.
In my opinion “standard medicines” (best practices) are only a great base and not a great medicine on its own.
It’s great to develop our own practices (of course we can take into account other experiences as a base), because they help our brain to keep on running in the information age, when you can replace your own brain with just one computer and internet (and google of course).
Juan Manuel Damia
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