Data, data everywhere yet nary an insight in sight.
Is that your web analytics existence?
Don’t feel too bad, you share that plight with most citizens of the Web Analytics universe.
The problem? The absolutely astonishing ease with which you can get access to data!
Not to mention the near limitless potential of that data to be added, subtracted, multiplied, and divided to satiate every weird need in the world.
You see just because you can do something does not mean you should do it.
And yet we do.
Like good little Reporting Squirrels we collect and stack metrics as if preparing for an imminent ice age. Rather than being a blessing that stack becomes a burden because we live in times of bright lovely spring and nothing succeeds like being agile and nimble about what we collect, what we give up, and what we deliberately choose to ignore.
The key to true glory is making the right choices.
In this case its making right choices about the web metrics we knight and sent to the battle to come back with insights for our beloved corporation to monetize.
A very simple test can allow you to figure out if the metric you are dutifully reporting (or absolutely in love with) is gold or mud.
It is called theThree Layers of So What test. It was a part of my first book,Web Analytics: An Hour A Day.
What’s this lovely test?
Simple really (occam’s razor!):
Ask every web metric you report the question “so what” three times.
Continues @http://www.kaushik.net