A while back I read a great post by web analytics master Avinash Kaushik. He wrote a bit about data geeks and the mountains of information they routinely collect and build. Information about traffic source overlain with pageviews, special segmentation, abandonment rates and exit pages, ad nauseam. Great piles of information that are watched daily and reported weekly. It’s the stuff the big-wigs asked for once it became known that the web analytics package could surface the goods. All the company needs in order to get ahead is a little more information …
Information makes data geeks drool. And yet those thick, aggregated reports are largely ignored by Those Who Make Things Happen.
How can that be? The reports are just what they asked for! Tabbed, cross-tabbed, and on a rolling three-month basis, too. Line graphs … pie charts … it’s all there!
What people want and what they ask for may be two different things.
The big-wigs really want to make the right choices, so their intent is in the right place. They think data will be the fuel they need to make changes, adjust budgets, rework channel distribution plans, advance launch timetables and the like.
What they find is that data alone – or worse, the standard mind-numbing meetings during which the reports purportedly are to be discussed but are instead filled with other distractions and agendas – is an insufficient means to evoke decisive action, particularly in larger organizations. They hamstring themselves with so much information, and no effective way to draw meaningful conclusions. Or no one brave enough to ask “When was the last time any of us actually used any of this?” Or “What does this stuff mean, really?” They’re intelligent high-earners so they grasp the academic concepts represented by the reports, but the question remains “What do we do next?”
The data is essentially meaningless without sufficient surrounding content and underlying context. Developing strategic insight is the hard part Seth Godin recently wrote about – insight comes from synthesizing information from a variety of sources, finding patterns and discrepancies, and looking in other directions, channels, and platforms. Customers lead multi-channel lives, so analysis of the data pile had better look at those areas, too.
The real objective is not to collect the data. The real objective is to find the “something” in a sea of potential options when the environment is not controlled.
More choices do not necessarily lead to better decisions or greater satisfaction.
For about 10 years now, the leading bodies in cultural trends, food service, and grocery retail have reported that Americans are increasingly seeking flavorful options, even in well-established categories. See Malcolm Gladwell’s famous TED talk for details. These groups believe it’s because we want to exercise more control over our lives and fill our needs for self-expression and customization. Yet studies conducted by Columbia University professor Sheena Iyengar suggest that while people like some variety, we are easily overwhelmed when our selection of choices – be it jam, computers, or clothing – exceed six or seven. There are neurological limits on humans’ ability to process information. It becomes too much for us to compare and contrast. We’ll even abandon the situation without having made any choice at all. We overestimate our own capacity for managing these choices. (I’m talking about consumers now, but doesn’t it sound like the business scenario above?)
Help me help you.
I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve configured my new Dell online, only to abandon the shopping cart. The whole thing got to be too much. It wasn’t any sort of sticker shock, but rather the fear of making the wrong selection which gripped me. Was that the right processor for my 67-open-tabs-at-a-time habit? Could I store all my raw video files without risk? Better to stick with the dog I have for now, I guess.
Consider for a moment the veritable cornucopia of choices in women’s outwear at Land’s End. Not only are there designations of parka, jacket, and coat but then there’s down of various fills, Polar This, Therma That. The list goes on.
That vast assortment could just lead to decision paralysis. All that data! Instead, Land’s End designed a shopping experience which categorizes their large assortment of clothing options into something I can latch onto and digest. I don’t really want to know the warming properties of one individual material over another, but with high-level categories like “Warm” “Warmer” and “Warmest” along with a temperature performance designation, I can now translate all the product info into something meaningful. And take decisive action.
What we really want is a better choosing experience – the information-processing component of choosing. We want to minimize our cognitive stress to make better selections which will satisfy us. “We frequently pay a mental and emotional tax for the freedom of choice.”
Iyengar and article coauthor Agrawal wrote:
If the market for your product is saturated with choice, you can’t gain a competitive edge by dumping more choices into the mix. Instead, you can outthink and outperform your competitors by turning the process of choosing into an experience that is more positive and less mind-numbing for your customers. You can design a more helpful form of choice.
The bottom line.
Business: when they say they want more data, what they really want is better analysis of the data.
Consumers: when they say they want more choice, what they really want is a better choosing experience.
How can the interests of business and the wants of consumers meet to drive revenues and satisfaction?
*Note: Cold Stone Creamery boasts 11.5 million flavor combinations with their array of ice creams. Baskin Robins differentiated itself in 1953 with 31 flavors, one for every day of the month, before growing to 1,000 flavors today.
Related articles
- From Web Analytics & SEM To Business Intelligence (searchengineland.com)
- Avinash Kaushik on Storytelling & Web Analytics (toprankblog.com)
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