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01.16.07
Why 100 Percent Conversion Is A Very Bad Thing
 By
Gary Angel
Even within my own company, opinions vary dramatically about how useful web reporting (as opposed to analysis) actually is.
Some of us tend to think reporting is just another one of those things clients insist on then don't find much use in. While a majority still believe that reporting is essential - but have to admit that it often falls far short of our expectations in terms of usefulness. I fall mostly into this second camp.
This means, however, that we agree that reporting is often much less useful for a client than we'd hoped. This is, frankly, puzzling. The web channel is large and fairly complicated - and it stands to reason that managers and stakeholders will be able to make better decisions if they know what's going on in the channel. Why isn't this always and obviously the case?
Before I delve directly into that issue, I want to talk in this post about a second issue that I think bedevils many report sets and also makes many users unreasonably negative about their importance. I call this issue the myth of actionability.
The myth of actionability is conventional wisdom in web analytics - and it suggests that you shouldn't report on anything unless changes in the measured value can be directly addressed by specific actions. In other words, if you can't answer the question "What would I do if the value changed up/down?" then you shouldn't report on the measure.
This criteria is designed to eliminate lots of useless data from report sets and insure that what is in report sets has substantive value.
Unfortunately, I believe the criteria of actionability is unsound in almost every way: being both wrong-headed about the purpose of reporting and impossible to actually satisfy in the real-world.
Let's start with the first point. Reporting is designed to provide information back to key decision-makers within an organization about the web channel. It is an article of faith - and I think a reasonable one - that the deeper the understanding those decision-makers have about the channel, the better their decisions are likely to be. In this context, the criteria of actionability can be taken to read: only measures that suggest specific actions lead to a deeper understanding of the web channel.
Put this way, it already seems a lot less convincing. It implies that all the knowledge about the levers in the system must already be known and widely understood. If this wasn't true, then the report system would miss key pieces of information because a measurement would not appear actionable (no lever) when it actually was. I think it is fair to suggest that the key levers in the web channel are not always or even often known.
A proponent of the actionability criteria might argue that when the levers become known, then new measures can be added to the report system - but till then the information would just be clutter. I don't think that's quite right. Managers make most of their decisions on instincts - and probably always will. And people can often internalize information and use it without being able to codify how it translates into a specific lever. To me, if a reporting item seems to deepen understanding, it may well play a role in some action even if the actionable levers are completely unknown.
Continue reading this article.
About
the Author:
Gary Angel is the author of the "SEMAngel blog - Web Analytics and Search Engine Marketing practices and perspectives from a 10-year experienced guru.
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