I suspect this post will cause me some problems and that's not my intention. I'd prefer that it be the start of some discussions and I'll enjoy taking part if anybody is willing to let me. It goes a little like this:
- More and more people that I'm talking with are recognizing that web design is cross disciplinary in nature
- These people are from all over the globe. It's not a localized phenomenon
- Part of the recognition entails an understanding that knowing the mind of the consumer is vital
- Everybody that I've talked with in the front lines has shared that traditional web analytics tools have no clue what's going on in the mind of the consumer
I listen to these lamentations and respond with sympathy and empathy. I believe what they tell me is true. From their perspective, certainly, it is.
I've also written before about attention, engagement, how to get it and keep it, how the human brain is wired and how to make use of it. I don't mean this post to be a paid political advertisement for NextStage, but the simple fact is that we've been studying, researching and implementing solutions along "know the mind of the consumer" lines for several years now.
A client has been asking how to implement some methods on their sites and our response is routinely "What's the ultimate goal?"
The answer to that question use to be easy (for clients, anyway), "We want to increase profits" or "We want to decrease expenses". Traditional business.
Traditional business was built on an extreme push model. NextStage completed some research recently that deals with how consumers respond to internal company attributes and the results are (to me) staggering in their implications. I'll have a column about this appearing in AllBusiness.com soon so be prepared and yes, I'll post here when it goes live.
Business has moved from push to pull and lots of people have recognized it and written about it. One of the fallouts of the above mentioned research is some of the subtle here-to-fore unthinkable things that affect that pull. In this case, does a company have a good, healthy, working atmosphere? Yes? Consumers will respond favorably. No? Consumers will abandon the company unless it changes its way.
So how will traditional web analytics respond to what's bound to be an increasing analytics challenge unless it's willing to adopt some "mind of the consumer" solutions or methodologies?
The client mentioned above (and increasingly more clients as time goes on) are recognizing that the days of "do this-get that" via traditional methodologies are past -- possibly long past.
The original dream of one-to-one engagement with the consumer is becoming more and more a reality and the reality has two primary parts. First is the one everybody anticipated, having a conversation with individual consumers coming to a site. The second one only a few anticipated and it's the killer, me thinks; having a conversation with a mega-consumer -- a distributed consumer audience speaking with a single, unified voice thanks to the proliferation of social communication systems.
This second aspect is the killer because the mega-consumer is giving the single consumer considerable power. Companies can't put out poor workmanship or service and hope to survive long. They're no longer the giants in the battlefield, the mega-consumer is and that mega-consumer is demanding that companies deal with each unique consumer individually.
So web design, online communications, web function, purpose, goals and desired outcomes, need to be the final pieces of a much more involved and sophisticated discussion than "How many uniques did we have? How many page-views? How long were they on this page? The site as a whole?"
So whether now, Web Analytics?
Broken record time: It's not knowing what consumers and visitors did that's important. Not anymore, me thinks. Unless you know why they did it, how to get them to do it again and most importantly how to get them to do it when you want them to...
But that's just me, and I've been saying for years that it doesn't matter what's happening on the page, it only matters what's happening in the visitor's head. Until you know that part you don't really know anything at all.
And I really don't mean to be a Cassandra here. And I really would appreciate this to be the start of a discussion because it's something I'm genuinely curious about.
Comments, anyone?
PS - these are views from home. It's easy to muse when I'm looking out over vistas like these.
Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.
Upcoming Conferences:
- Society for New Communications Research Annual Research Symposium & Awards Gala on 5-6 Dec 07 in Boston.
- New Communications Forum 2008 22-25 April 08 in Sonoma Valley, CA
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