Analytics Literacy

Image courtesy of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory on Flickr

BARRIERS TO ONLINE/OFFLINE DATA INTEGRATION

Unica

52% of marketers said existing systems and data are too disparate to integrate online and offline customer data.

45% said organizational structure, corporate culture or internal processes not conducive to data integration.

THOUGHT: I would hazard a guess that a large barrier to making the most of Web analytics is that people don’t know what they don’t know.

Consider that control of web analytics within a typical organization will most likely be found in marketing/PR or within IT.

If the IT department is in charge of web analytics, they’re most likely using that data to improve the functioning of the website and improve usability but they are less likely to look at that data in terms of gaining insight into communication efforts.

If marketing/PR controls, they may be all about how the data relates to communications efforts but fail to understand how usability issues affect those very same efforts.

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This all assumes that each department actually understands what the data means, a not entirely safe bet.

What you rarely see, though–and what needs to happen–is providing access to web analytics data throughout the organization so that customer service and R&D can use it to listen to and gain insight from the customers.

But the only way to achieve this Utopian vision of  analytics consumption is to provide analytics literacy training through the organization and to build the use o analytics into the everyday workflow.

As Hemingway might say: Wouldn’t it be pretty to think so?

MINNESOTA MONDAY: Join me on Friday, May 27, for the Hubert H. Humphrey Birthday Centennial Reunion & Policy Discussions, a nonpartisan and educational event focused on problem-solving. [WATCH Video of Hubert H. Humphrey remembrances.] I will be a panelist.

Thank you for a wonderful birthday.

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