There is a perennial question in Web analytics: “Are the numbers up?”
Certain web metrics can be highly variable on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis. Daily Unique Visitors (UVs) and Daily Visits are just two examples of metrics that can change dramatically from one day to the next. These big swings in day-to-day numbers can make it difficult for managers to tell whether their KPIs are really trending up or down.
LinkedIn is not just Monster.com 2.0… it represents an entirely different way of thinking about and managing your career progression.
Many of us (most of us?) begin a job search reactively in response to something — maybe we didn’t get that promotion, the culture changed, we’re not getting the training or support we want, or one of a thousand other reasons. But most of us put off changing jobs or even careers until we’ve reached a very high point of frustration.
What LinkedIn does is this: Continue reading →
Let’s start with a simple premise: The more often something happens, the more often people write about it.
Sounds reasonable, right?
Albert Saiz and Uri Simonsohn, in their article “Downloading Wisdom from Online Crowds,” demonstrate that the relative frequency of documents returned by a search engine can be a good measure of how frequently a phenomenon occurs. For example, if you want to know the relative cost of living in all U.S. cities (or the relative amount of corruption, or perhaps even how good the golfing is) then simply searching for “Dallas cost-of-living” and “San Francisco cost-of-living” may give you a great index. If it works as advertised, this is a fantastic general research tool for analysts and marketing researchers. Let’s take a look.
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Things have come a long way since the days of analyzing Web server logs (raise your hand if you were at THAT party.) Web analytics tools like Google Analytics, SiteCatalyst, and WebtrendsAnalytics have brought basic site tracking and reporting to the masses, often with little more than dropping some javascript on the page. Closer to home, Business Intelligence (BI) and data warehousing tools such as MicroStrategy and Microsoft’s suite of tools provide a structured view into in-house data. Google Site Optimizer, SiteSpect, and tools like Omniture Recommendations go so far as to provide intelligent testing, targeting, and recommendation abilities to companies that even a few years ago would have met serious challenges developing these competencies in-house.
But these tools are not how you compete on analytics. Continue reading →
In 2003, Frederick Reichheld published a Harvard Business Review article entitled The One Number You Need to Grow. Reichheld’s article described a method for computing a simple, easy-to-understand customer satisfaction metric called the Net Promoter Score — and ushered in a flavor-of-the-month management practice that has left a bad taste in the mouth of academics and serious marketing researchers Continue reading →
Experimental psychologist and 13-year Internet veteran driving revenue and profitability through applied measurement strategies and advanced analytical techniques
About Jeb Stone
