Susan the Meticulous and The Genesis of Analytics
December 22nd, 2007 by susanThe eldest of my two young children has discovered analytics. He still understands it only as measurement, but I see The Meticulous gleam.
Is it genetic? Perhaps if my children had been born hundreds of years ago, our family would have been the The Trackers of Evanshire, or the Adders of Lakehorn. Maybe there is misunderstanding when we interpret the historical designations…possibly being honored as “The Count of…” meant something else entirely.
This child recorded the circumference of a tree outside our back door, then sealed the paper bearing solely “18.5 inches” into an envelope with instruction to me to send it to his grandfather, another of the Meticulous clan - an actual verified rocket scientist. For both child and grandfather, the measurement alone is sufficient as overture, communication, message.
You must love analytics (or children!) as much as we do if you’ve made it this far. Making the assumption you are a marketer, possibly even a web marketer, or someone who relies on web marketing for revenue, here is my curiosity. What are the three top measurements - the visible, tangible indicators - (and these must be pre-sales!) you watch to assess that your web marketing efforts are doing what they need to do? Do you watch Google rank on search terms that have converted in the past? Do you look for a certain presence or absence of a particular kind of lead generated off your site? Is it unique visitors or aggregate page views that indicate to you a meaningful change in volume?
It is my experience that people successful at hitting their ultimate targets always are tracking something intermediate, something that kicks off data to guide the degree and direction of mid-campaign adjustments. In a political campaign these indicators are a) money and b) votes. In a web marketing campaign…what are you watching?
