Published on Jan 30, 2012
Let’s think about another problem from high school days. Why did the American Revolution happen? That it happened is a fact. Why it happened is another problem altogether, fraught with opinion and conjecture, but one thing is certain: there were definitely reasons that it occurred. The colonists did not all just wake up one day and say, “Hey, let’s go to war with England!” There were multiple variables and factors and causes all leading up to that one outcome.
Understanding your digital marketing data is like both of these situations. Like just assuming that two lines are parallel without proving it, we can all be prone to look at the surface data: “Our website traffic is up 20%! Everything is wonderful!” or, conversely “Our website traffic is down 20%! We need to make major changes to our business / marketing / everything under the sun!” These are, of course, exaggerations. The point is that we so easily make assumptions because we “know.” Well, we really don’t, until we try and prove why we have that outcome. Then, we know – although not with 100% certainty; that part is more applicable to math.
Understanding the factors that led into a certain situation allow you to analyze it. If you analyze the American Revolution, you see items like taxation without representation. If you analyze your data to explore why your website traffic went up 20%, you might see items as varied as:
1) You changed how you were tracking certain leads that accidentally allowed them to be counted multiple times, so you have a bug you need to fix.
2) Your email marketing campaign has taken off and has increased your traffic by 40%, but your organic has actually decreased 20%, so your overall increase is 20% (this means you need to address the issue of your organic traffic).
3) You have slight increases across the board from all of your marketing campaigns and the traffic they drive. Go celebrate! Then find out why you are being successful and perfect and optimize and increase your traffic even more.
The same applies to reasons why your traffic might have gone down. Maybe your product is really seasonal and you weren’t even aware of it because you have been in business a short time. Maybe you recently updated your marketing campaigns so you are getting less traffic, but the traffic you are getting is more valuable to your business long-term. There are all kinds of reasons.
Completing a geometry proof and gearing up to start the American Revolution both take time. Lots of time. (I was really bad at geometry.) To get the most out of your data, you need to be prepared to put in some time. Try some of these tips when you are staring at your data and wondering what to do with it:
1) Segment it! Data in aggregate does virtually nothing for you. As I mentioned above, if your website traffic went up or down 20%, it is almost impossible for you to know why or do anything relevant about it without looking at why. To find that out, you need to segment your data.
2) Look beyond the basic website traffic numbers. What else can you look at? What about where the traffic comes from? Which marketing campaigns? Which geographic locations?
3) Think about the data. If you have 1,000 visitors come from your organic traffic and 50 of them sign up for the email newsletter, what does that really mean for your business? What if 30 of those 1,000 watch a video on your website? What if 500 of them left the site immediately without seeing what you had to offer (bounce rate)? Tie traffic sources to specific patterns of behavior and figure out what that means for your business.
4) When you have reached a few conclusions (with data to support them!), try to make a small change and see how it impacts the data. For example, if you have a 50% bounce rate on your home page, why not design a new home page with a stronger call to action or a more appealing design and run it through a service like Five Second Test? With a little development skill (very little) or a little help, you could also give a system like Google Optimizer a try. See if your bounce rate goes down. If the page works, make it your new home page. Lower bounce rate = more visitors staying on your website and learning about all you have to offer.
Happy measuring!
