Try, Try, Try Again; Just Do it more quickly!
Failing isn’t what it used to be. In fact, in the web analytics world, you are
encouraged to fail; as long as you learn from your failures. The great thing about failure with web
analytics is the fact that you can quickly bounce back, modify, and continue to
test. The internet is so broad and so
easily obtained for many people throughout the world that you have the greatest
testing environment sitting in front of you on your own desk. In previous generations, and do I dare say much
still today; marketing personnel conjure up the latest design trends, find a
publisher, print their mailers or flyers, and quickly disseminate their
creations only to wait for weeks to discover the results of their labors. The wonderful world of internet marketing
does not give us this incredible lag between production and results. Web analytics can feed back real time how
effective your latest marketing idea is going to be before you waste or
continue to invest valuable resources.
This is $ HUGE $ in the
marketing world. Test, review, modify
and re-test! This is going to save
anyone money. As Avinash Kaushik suggests;
one could launch a marketing campaign on their website before they go with
retail setups and trials.
There are some great tips in Web Analytics 2.0, but
I will cover only a few here that are of particular interest. Peter Tew, ECommerce Manager at Astro Gaming,
recently presented an important aspect of testing or working in web analytics
itself; that is to be humble. You need
to realize that what you think is not always going to be the best way. If you feel so confident about your
particular path for a marketing campaign, throw it online and go live. In no time at all you will verify and quite
often see disconnect between you and your customers. You don’t understand your customers as well
as you thought you did. Don’t worry too
much. Sometimes you will be right and
confirm that you are the greatest marketer your company has ever seen. Nonetheless, it is important that you remain
humble and keep on testing. The same
thing can be seen with HiPPOs (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion)1. If your boss has an idea that she thinks will
be the greatest thing since sliced bread, throw that online as another version
and allow your customers to tell her whether or not her idea was as great as
she thought it to be. The customers are
better at telling you what works than those who run the business. Additional reading on this topic is found in
Avinash’s book, Web Analytics 2.0 in chapter 7.
He calls it, “Tip 3: ‘Open the
Kimono’ – Get Over Yourself.”
Another important aspect of testing is to
unfortunately have your customers suffer in hopes that they will reply and let
you know exactly what they don’t like about a particular feature on your
website. The “IMPORTANT” part
to remember is that they need to have an avenue by which they can submit their
feedback. If this tool is not included
in your website, get it there. Direct
feedback from your customers is ever so valuable. Consider the example of Starbucks and their “My Starbucks Idea” that they solicited
from their own employees. This was a
huge success in bringing great ideas to their company including mobile payments. See the article at the following link “about.com”
for more reading about their successful customer/employee feedback
program. For reference, I would like to
include the three most important survey questions according to Avinash. They are as follows:
1 – What is
the purpose of your visit to our website today?
2 – Were you able to complete your task today?
3 – If you were not able to complete your task today, why not?
"Survey Says"
Avinash even provides a link to be able to implement this survey on your
website.
And here it is: Survey
Implementation
The same advice can be given to all aspects of our lives. Great read! And very good inventors are those that learned from their failures.
ReplyDeleteI always liked the quote "learn to fail quickly". Your advice is very beneficial.
ReplyDelete