Guest Post: Benchmarking Web Analytics

Now that the X Change conference is just over a month out several of the experts and huddle leaders that will be in attendance have offered to talk a little bit about what they’re going to be talking about in August.  Jared Waxman leads the Data Insights Group at Intuit’s Mountain View headquarters and is a very bright and outgoing member of the web analytics community.  Jared is launching a survey designed to help us all better understand how effectively we’re doing web analytics and will be talking about the results in his huddles at X Change.

Please read what Jared has to say and please take 10 minutes to complete his survey!

————————————————————————

Shortly after Eric Peterson invited me to lead a few of the X Change conference huddles this year, I realized something slightly ironic … We collect tons of data about our customers, but we still have far less cold, hard data when it comes to ourselves. In other words, what are the KPIs by which we can benchmark our own analytics practices against similar organizations?

If you’re not sure why this should concern you, ask yourself the following questions:

• When is the last time you received special recognition from your boss for how cutting-edge your analytics program is?
• How much of your last analytics budget proposal got approved?
• If resources were constrained, do you know which one analytics project would give your org the biggest leg-up?

The missing puzzle piece behind all these questions is: the right benchmarking data.

Chances are your boss wants to give you praise, but isn’t sure just which of things you’ve accomplished merits awarding you that mounted, singing Bass fish trophy (stuffed with cash, of course). And the budget? Management never wants to hear they’re about as cutting-edge as an animated gif. Armed with the right data, you can lay out for them what it’s going to take to catch-up, or take the lead.

If you really knew how your programs and capabilities compared to other companies in your space, you’d have the foundation for a pretty solid case for both the praise you deserve, and also the resources to beef up areas you’ve been slower to ramp on. This isn’t news, of course, and Tom Davenport and Jeanne Harris’ book, “Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning” stresses the point that it’s not just about what you are doing on your island, but it’s about being faster and smarter that your competition in leveraging data and analytics.

So how do you know how you stack up? For a start, fill-out this 10-Minute Benchmarking Survey that I assembled to help your organization get a read on where you stand. It was challenging to come up with every use-case or application of web analytics in practice today and still have it be short enough that you can complete the survey while on-hold with your mortgage company. Ok, it was impossible. So I settled on a sampling of valuable activities that are components of many successful analytics practices. I hope you’ll agree it is sufficient for a strong directional read within key areas: Tracking, Competitive, Testing, & Predicting.

So I humbly present you with the Benchmarking Survey, and will reveal the results at X Change, and of course share your score back with you for your participation, once the results are compiled:

Start the Web Analytics Benchmark Survey

I hope to see you at the X Change conference. I’ll be leading a huddle on Testing Strategies alongside Dylan Lewis. At Intuit we have a sort of competition going for who’s group can take testing the furthest. We each have such different organizations and challenges, and that has led to very divergent strategies. Yet we are constantly learning from one another and looking forward to learning from the participants about what their challenges and strategies have been.

I’ll also be leading a huddle on Using Real-Time Surveys to Improve the Customer Experience. By building our own Voice of Customer apps, we’ve been able to provide an immediately tailored site experience for the customer and equally as important, effect more lasting improvements by orchestrating the right influence within the broader marketing organization.

Finally, I’ll be leading a huddle on Competitive Intelligence Tools & Methodologies. Sounds clandestine and exciting, huh? Truth is, I’d tell you more about this huddle if I could, but then I’d have to make you sign three different NDAs and learn the Intuit secret handshake … So just sign up and I’ll see you in person.