The “Inexact Science” of Web Analytics

May 17th, 2008

The “Inexact Science” of Web Analytics

By Michelle Marty

OSUMKTG754 Student

Guest Blog Post

Growing up I was always partial to mathematics in grade school. I believe this was because you were, under all circumstances, guaranteedSimple Math one of two possibilities. Your answer was going to be right….. Or it was going to be wrong. Two plus two always equaled four, the square root of nine was always three, and the cosine of zero inevitably equaled one.

I have found this is, and never will be, the case when it comes to web analytics. There is no set formula or algorithm you can resort to when attempting to arrive at a final answer. There are innumerable techniques to go about a problem in analytics and in the end there is no universal Frustrationacceptance to tell you whether your conclusion is right, or for that matter, even close. The answers are not found in the back of a book nor are they listed in Wikipedia. As Andrew Goodman states in his book, Winning Results with Google AdWords, “You can’t assume there are hard-and-fast rules” because in the end analytics is “an inexact science.” This is what I find most frustrating when it comes to web analytics.

Not only is it impossible to deduce if your assumptions are correct or not, they are continually going to be different. The solutions to analytics problems look different for different companies. This is because the factors presented to you are constantly changing and are different in every corporation, every business, and in every market. Also, trends in customer behavior vary within these elements as well. Causes for these variances could link from aCycle number of factors such as the time of year, the value of the good being marketed, and the demographic which is being marketed to.

Having infinite probable situations can be frustrating enough. On top of that, analytics also has infinite improvement opportunities. This is because, as Goodman states, “it is not always possible to pinpoint exactly an absolute measure of success.” Your work in this field is never finished and you can always improve your overall performance. After coming to understand the field of web analytics, I have never so literally meant, “your work is never done.”

Posted in Ohio State University Fisher College of Business.

 

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