Last week, we shared the first 5 of our 10 illustrated digital analytics tips. Read on for the rest…
6. Segment to isolate.
If you process all your data together as a whole, the different audiences of your website, mobile site and mobile apps will all be mixed together.
With segmentation, you can isolate the behaviour of specific audiences. You can segment visitors based on whether they’re new or returning, the types of actions taken on your site or app, or the types of marketing actions that brought them to your property, just to name a few examples.
To find meaningful insights in your masses of collected data, use segmentation to isolate groups, and focus your analysis on a single group (such as all red paper clips, following the analogy here!).
7. Use charts.
Data listed in tables is often difficult to interpret. Having a visual representation of your data will make it easier to identify and understand any similarities, underlying trends
or anomalies. Charts are essential to describing and explaining problems.
Follow Marshall’s lead, and turn to charts to present all of your results!
8. Be wary of reasoning errors.
When confronted with a large volume of data to be analysed quickly, it is tempting to take a simplified path to process the information. What you might consider to be a cause-and-effect relationship could actually simply be a correlation… or just a coincidence.
Reasoning errors are like optical illusions: The error remains convincing, even if we are fully aware that it is an error.
In this photo, ask yourself what you are really seeing, and you’ll no longer confuse the painting with the real thing.
9. Test before you act.
Deciding to make changes to your site can be a risky business.
As a result, there’s a need to be able to experiment with new things, and to be able to quickly realise when any of these tests are underperforming, so that you can pull the plug on counter-productive modifications.
Running tests will give you the opportunity to verify that your changes do, in fact, improve performance in real-life conditions… It’s your users who will tell you whether your tested actions are justified – or not.
So before taking the plunge, count on a testing phase to test the waters.
10. Adapt presentations.
Once you’ve finished your analysis, all that remains is to present the results and conclusions to the decision-makers. The challenge is to grab their attention and convince them of the relevance of your recommendations.
In your presentation, be sure to focus on what’s important to them, and what is most likely to make them act.
So, avoid Arnold’s style, and instead look for arguments other than your biceps to convince your audience!
That’s it for our 10 photos and analytics tips. Now, all that’s left to do is to put our advice into practice.
Looking for other digital analytics tips? Check out our library of analytics resources!
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