Web analytics and Senior Management

A couple of years ago when I got into web analytics one of the top issues that web analysts and marketers faced was trying to convince Senior Management that web analytics has immense business value. Times are different now it seems, as the need for understanding is turning into an extreme hunger for data and knowledge. This can be a blessing and a curse at the same time.

 Budgets have started opening up to web analytics and there’s an ever increasing demand in skilled analysts, in various industries. All because a growing number of top-level executives realize that their online business has been a black box so far – pumping money in on one end and getting a certain amount of ROI on the other.

What does that mean for analysts?

• More resources, better tools, more knowledge, but also:
• Data-hungry top-level executives!

That’s right – it’s the overload phase of the “web statistics” to “business intelligence” evolution! Top-level execs are so fascinated with all the data that’s available in this brave new world that all they want is more, more and more. That attitude often means it defies the scope of web analytics: To gather knowledge, analyze the knowledge and – take action! So much time is wasted on data/knowledge that has little meaning and even less potential for improving ROI and it seems some businesses have lost direction and are trying to squeeze every drop out of their web analytics program (and analysts).

What’s worse is, a lot of SMB-sized companies are going from AWstats to Omniture  from one day to the next and run reports on every single detail they can get. To add insult to injury, they often only have the resources to put into action a fraction of what they learn, which in turn results in bad decision-taking on what knowledge has the best potential to result in improved results. What a waste!

My plea to top-level execs:

Please remember to FOCUS and prevent your company from wasting time and money on knowledge you cannot action on anyway. Web analytics is there to give you a better bang for your buck, not to waste more resources than you had hoped to gain.