Miracle Website Diet! 8 Web Analytics Resolutions

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It’s a New Year which means… resolutions!  I’m trying to skip the meaningless, aspirational goals that I usually dream up.  Instead, I’m digging down into the things that I can really commit to.  I’m making 8 resolutions for Digital Alex and ClickEquations.com (which I’m responsible for).

1. I will integrate my data.  People come to my site.  Then, they become leads, customers and retained customers.  I really want to make decisions about where to spend my money based on who is the most valuable.  That means I have to connect the clicks to the customers with extra site and campaign tagging.
2. I will QA my data at least once a month.  I’m going to totally level with you here.  I’m guilty of some web analytics sloth.  Sometimes I’ll QA data once, make the fixes and only deal with spot issues.  We all know data is dirty and I just can’t assume it’s right.  Bad data happens!  This is especially true on B2B sites (see above).  I resolve to do a more thorough review at least monthly and act swiftly.
3. I won’t have an ego about my website. In the face of mounting evidence to the contrary, I concede that I do not know everything.  That’s why it’s probably better for me to rely on what customers care about what the data says.  Multivariate testing and voice of customer, here I come!
4. I will prioritize speed over perfection.  I’ve been accused of a “shoot first, aim later” style and, frankly, I’ll embrace the label.  In my opinion, it’s better to ask forgiveness instead of permission.  To me, it’s all about speed.  The same is true in online marketing, design and analytics.  It’s easy to obsess to the point of inaction.  I’m not saying to be sloppy, but I am say that something launched at 80% is better than nothing launched at 95%.  Speed has a tremendous value.  I will analyze until the answers are good enough and then correct.
5. I will grow my website’s traffic and my business. “So what?” is the best and most common analytics question.  We analyze to act.  We act to improve results and grow the business.  To do that, I need more outcomes, more conversion rate and more traffic.  More, more, more!  My analysis won’t be inside of the bubble of my tool.  It will include the data I need to say “And here’s how we act on that to make more money…”
   
   
6. I will find out what my customers want and give it to them.  Citing resolution #3, I’m going make sure that my analysis focuses on the question “What do my customers need that I can deliver that helps me make more money?”  I will use tools like 4Q and secondary research to help me improve all the aspects of my site - UX, design, copy, persuasion, SEO, etc.  In my opinion, we all need to educate ourselves about other disciplines to be able to make real, actionable recommendations to improve customer satisfaction.
7. I will plug the leaks in my website. Exit pages, leaky conversion funnels and bounces (single page visits).  Some of them are natural byproducts of the way people interact with websites.  I care about the unnatural ones.  I care about the missed opportunities.  I’m going to examine each of these 3 areas and ask myself “Is this due to natural behavior (such as different visit intent), attracting the wrong audience or bad site design?”  I’m going to focus on the last one first to improve results.
8. I won’t rely just on my website analytics package.  Repeat after me: no analytics package is perfect.  I can’t get all of the data I want out of Google Analytics (ex: it fails paid search marketers).  Instead, I’m going to bring in other data for thing like SEO (Google Webmaster Central) or paid search (ClickEquations).  I’ll incorporate context from the market (Google Trends) and competition when it makes sense (SpyFu).

We’ll see how long I can stay on the wagon.  What’s 1 resolution you really care about?