Goals, not reports!

What a great last two weeks!

  1. iLovePhotos has launched!
  2. Visits to both of our websites has increased: www.ilovephotos.com and www.bluelavatech.com.
  3. Last week visits to my blog, idaconcpts.com, were 7 times the weekly average! A big thank you to StumbleUpon and to the person who referred to me on this great service.  To this date, StumpleUpon has provided a total of 354 visits (and counting!), that is about 46% of total visits! Mahalo!
  4. Classes started again at the Shidler College of Business, where I am attending my second year at the MBA program.  Currently I am attending Marketing 656: Creativity in Marketing and Marketing 690: US Marketing in the Information Age.  I highly recommend the latter course and you can check out our curriculum at the provided link.
  5. On a personal note, I am back at surfing! : )
Jen Toba.
Life is good here in Hawaii! Photo Credit: Jen Toba.
Let’s talk about the title of this post: goals, not reports!  I have been reviewing Avinash Kaushik’s Web Analytics: An Hour a Day and the clear message from the first 192 pages (out of the 420 of relevant content!) is that any monkey can read web metrics and that the real job of the web analyzer is to provide the neccesary feedback to achieve the prescribed goals and desired outcomes of the website.
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This might not sound like an epiphany of any kind, but it is a critical starting point for the web analyzer. Chasing metrics for the sake of chasing metrics is not the way to meet and exceed conversion goals, it involves much more.  Web analyzers are obsessed with statistics but the trick is to provide management actionable items.  My reporting strategy, for now, is to provide a statistic and an actionable item.
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For example:
  • Statistic:  out of XXX visits to ilovephotos.com, XXX% come from USA, XXX% come from Germany, XXX% come from France.
  • Actionable item:  from the XXX visits from Germany, XXX% came from this discussion thread: http://www.macnews.de/news/110985.html, I will make a couple of posts in German to answer their questions.
The approach is to provide my team at Blue Lava Technologies ACTIONABLE ITEMS.  Please note, that these two examples are just day-to-day action items, rather than long-term strategies.  Sorry, but I cannot give away the special sauce recipe! : ) However, I am more than happy to share strategies via e-mail at damian@bluelavatech.com.
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In other news, this is the summary of the top posts at idaconcpts.com:
WordPress Blog Stats
All-time top posts at idaconcpts.com. Source: WordPress Blog Stats
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Definitely, the hottest topic around is the analysis of Flickr.com using Google Trends.
A follow-up post is in order!  Stay tuned!
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Cheers!

Author: Damian Davila

Ideas and concepts from Damian Davila, Ecuatoriano thriving in Hawaii. Pro marketer and blogger. Find him at @idaconcpts on Twitter.