The Joy of Stats
Further proof that I’m a geek: I just love Web analytics. They used to call me the Stats Hound at my last place of employment. All of which causes great amusement for my wife who knows that the last math class I took was as a junior in high school when I barely passed geometry.
I think there are two things behind my love for Web analytics:
- I’m a reformed journalist who spent a lot of years in the PR and communications fields, where the impact of a lot of what you do is hard – if not impossible – to measure.
- There are few things I find more satisfying then when we try something to improve a Web site and we get results. In other words, we did A, and we got results B. Pure joy (it’s okay to feel sorry for me).
Greystone manages a Web site for a small health system, and doing the monthly stats report is a blast. Not only are most of their numbers well into the top quartile (I love success), the things we try to improve their site seem to work. For example, one of the most popular features is the physician search, and we made some changes that should streamline the user’s ability to find doctors. Voila, a slightly lower average time on site and a corresponding increase in visits to physician profiles.
We manage the AdWords campaign for a client, and have been tweaking the ads and landing pages to increase the click-through rate and, ultimately, site traffic. The result? A click-through rate so high that we’re now hitting our max budget just about every day. That kind of traffic is a nice problem to have!
As Hannibal from the old TV show “The A Team” used to say, “I love it when a good plan comes together.”
On the other side of the coin, a critical form is showing an abandonment rate that is higher than I’d like to see. The detective work of digging into the nuances of the data combined with the testing of various solutions makes me feel like I’m in the middle of an episode of “Law and Order.”
If you aren’t doing this kind of digging into your results, not only are you missing out on a lot of potentially significant opportunities for improvement, you’re missing out on a lot of fun.
All those who think Neal needs to get out more, raise your hands (put your hand down, Mrs. Linkon).