Web Site Measurement Hacks

Distribute Reports Wisely

Don’t waste people’s time by sending out pages and pages of data

Given all you’ve learned at this point in the book, I’m sure you’re thinking “That’s a lot of information to communicate.” You’re right, it is. Fortunately there are some simple, effective strategies for distributing reports that take advantage of what we know about people’s relationships with information. While I’m forced to use some generalities, experience tells me that often these assumptions hold up under scrutiny and can help you make better decisions about who gets what report when.

Give the People What They Want, or Better Yet, What They Need

People have a tendency, when volumes of data are available, to present volumes of data and let the reader sort it out; this is often the case with web measurement data. The problem with this strategy is that it assumes the reader will take the time to figure out which information is relevant to her; this is rarely the case in web measurement, usually because the data is foreign to most people. The best strategy to get people to invest their time is to give them the data they need to do their job and little else. If you take the time to figure out which data is most relevant to a person or group within your company and present that data in language they use and understand, you’ll see your efforts pay off, and inevitably your recipients will ask different and, hopefully, better questions.

Use the Same Language Your Audience Uses Whenever Possible

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