Tanya Ferrell is Passing Notes.

I finally got a chance to read/watch Kaushik’s post on web analytics, over at Occam’s Razor. The 55-minute video says it all though. At the end of Kaushik’s presentation, an audience member calls it was inspirational and it is. His presentation is about a new way of thinking, a new mindset. He even gives us a little diagram make it easier for us visual folks:

I found several points he made particularly useful:

• Web Analytics cannot be done in a silo. Looking at your own site’s statistics mean nothing unless you compare them to your competitors.
• Primary research is important. Surveys are not to be replaced by analytics software. Analytics can only tell you so much. Surveys answer the who and the why.
• Never lose sight of your goal: gaining insights.

I took a class last year, Online Marketing Research, that should have been called Web Analytics. Learning this stuff in that class would have been so helpful. There always seems to be a gap between education and the real world. There’s that time difference: text books vs. media. And there’s the one between theory and application.

I’ll be sharing this with my Department Director at AIP. Hopefully it’ll find its way to the person teaching Online Marketing Research this quarter.