Glowleaf

Web analytics are essential in the modern business. It’s real dumb not to use them, 10 years ago people sent out questionaries and gathered data and feedback, spending months analyzing them to find out what was happening in the real world that related to their subject.

Now, you can practically do the same with Google Analytics for example, getting more accurate data, without wasting your time or your client’s, and most importantly, you can do it for free.

Web analytics generate tons of data for your online business. But, there is a reason that there are courses in universities for Statistics. Statistical analysis can make you or brake you, it can steer you off course, or show you the hidden gem. And it all depends on who does the analysis.

A statistical analyst cannot be average. He either sucks, or he is brilliant. And Statistical Science by itself is a pile of crap. It’s the only science that can prove that if I have a chicken for lunch, and you are starving, then we both ate half a chicken, and everyone is happy.

But, if you pair the same science to someone with a 3 digit IQ, one who has experience on the subject, and takes a holistic approach to data analysis, then you are doing great.

You see, in computer science, we separate the term “data” from the term “information“.

• Data, is the raw data, the numbers, the stats. By itself its meaningless.

“324 visitors, 1240 pageviews, 728 incoming links”. It doesn’t really mean anything.

• Information, on the other hand, is what we extrapolate from the data.

“Devoted audience, multiple article reads per visit, popularity in fora and other blogs”. Now that is information.

Information, shows you the lay of the land, where you are doing well, where you are not, and what you should do to improve rankings/conversions/traffic/loyalty depending on your goal. You need to extract information from data. And if you have a hosting account, you already have data. Gather enough of them so they are statistically important as a sample, and start seeing the patterns.

Chances are that you cannot hire an analyst for your online business, but I am going to give you an example analysis of this blog, so that you can go along the same lines.

Coming soon, at the next post. Hit my big bad RSS button.