I have been lobbying for a key addition to our product to allow us to optimize traffic that comes to our site via a very distinct channel. To date, this channel has shown an extremely dramatic increase in traffic to our site (year over year) – without us optimizing the experience for the user or having a distinct message for this channel.
Up until today, I had not gained much traction in getting the changes approved. However, after I stated the opportunity as “we pay people to manage channel X. This other channel that we do nothing with and serve a “hostile” user experience to accounts for 1.5 times the traffic of channel X.”, people took notice. Once the opportunity was stated in a way that used easy to understand measurements, the initiative moved from the back burner to “how do we fix this?”.
This change in direction would not have been possible without a proper web analytics platform being in place. However, even if you have the “best in class” tool in place, it means nothing if you do not actively research and leverage the data being delivered to you on an ongoing basis.
Having been in attendance of that meeting, I can say that this is a shining example of how analytics *should* be utilized. Let’s see where there’s an opportunity we’re missing out on and act accordingly… not hide behind numbers as a reason to not try something. I’m glad you did the research, as it will be an extremely fun project to work on once the ball gets rolling, and will serve users very well.