Seth Godin Saying “No”

I’m sure this is purely coincident. Yesterday I blogged about the first tip I shared with my fellow web analysts, titled “Tell me why you need this data before I give it to you!” Today I read a brief post by Seth Godin, “Saying no”.

Essentially we are talking about the same thing. Maybe I am not as bold as Seth but a little more polite by asking “why” question than straightly saying “no”. The end goal is the same: by asking “why” question or saying “no”, we allow ourselves focus on critical few things, rather than millions of ad hoc requests.

That’s the choice we all have to make. Like Seth put it so simply, “you can dissipate your gift by making the people with the loudest requests temporarily happy, or you can change the world by saying ‘no’ often. ”

Web Analytics is Personal

We all are professionals so we tend to be very professional in what we do. However today I learned that web analytics can be personal.

Well, to be more accurate, I learned that long time ago when I watched how Avinash Kaushik, Jim Sterne, Eric Peterson or Bryan Eisenberg presenting in eMetrics Summit or anywhere they go. They are passionate, energetic, and they are personal.

Today I experienced that too.

Today we hit a really great milestone in web analytics within Dell. Several months after implementing SiteCatalyst globally, we presented a global executive dashboard which enables our executives to get a weekly snapshot of the site performance across our global regions.  It gives them a great benchmark, drive standardization of the site, promote best pracitice sharing. More importantly, it drives them to prioritize their web analysts’ time to work on big opportunities, instead of tons of ad hoc requests or routine reporting.

When a senior manager told me, “Oh my this is a thing of beauty! Tear in eye….” and when my director said, “we need turn web analytics from a tool to THE weapon”, I know that we are on something here. Tomorrow is going to be a little different. We might start to see a transformation and a new culture might emerge.

So that’s my thought of today. Web analytics can be personal, can be exciting, can be something you really love. It doesn’t have to be dull at all. Let’s get out of our cubes, start to be like a champion or evangelist within our organization.

It’s your time to shine now, seriously.

counted counts?

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. - Einstein

Listen to what the genius said and you will be more comfortable dealing with ambiguity.  Einstein said here can be applied everywhere in our life but probably most appropriate in our field: web analytics. Essentially we are people who are supposed to count everything related to the website: page views, sessions, visitors, on and on. The web 2.0 only adds more of such objects to our list: RSS, video, user generated contents, on and on. This list will never end and as the technology innovates, people’s curiosity will only get bigger and bigger.

So next time when your manager asks you to count for the # of trillions of metrics, be sure you quote what Einstein said. And you and I should really focus on critical few things that can be counted (measurability) and that really count (relevance).

And I am having the job to do to define what those things (read it as KPIs) are for my company.

web metrics illusion?

According to Tim Ambler, “Marketing metrics create the illusion of certainty and control. Cannabis has much the same effect. ”

I’m afraid web metrics too create the illusion of certainty and control. As web analyst, we are obsessed by all kinds of metrics and dashboards. But to some extends, we have to admit even we could have all possible data under heaven, there are still things that we can’t figure it out. And 90% of time we think we are right, we are actually wrong. The reason is we are dealing with people, not data. Let’s keep the people element in our mind when creating metrics and dashboards.

P.S. note on Tim Ambler. Never heard of him before, but he is the professor in London Business School and according to this page, he is an expert in the following area:

If you’re not blogging, you’re an idiot…

When Tom Peters speaks, people listens. And here is what he has to say on the topic of blogging.

“If you’re not blogging, you’re an idiot… No single thing in the last 15 years has been more important to me professionally than blogging… It’s changed my thinking, it’s changed my outlook… it’s the best damn marketing tool and it’s free.” – Management uber-guru Tom Peters speaking to attendees at the 27th annual Inc. 5000 conference.

Web analyst as a group enjoy blogging more than any other analytics groups I have seen. Does this mean we are smarter than other type of analyst? At least we are not a bunch of idiots?

And here is his blog: www.tompeters.com/blogs/main/blogging/ Enjoy reading! and blogging!