13 Critical Problems Faced in Web Analytics
Web Analytics faces many challenges each and every day. Below are just some of the challenges faced:
- Lack of top level executive endorsement and sponsorship. For your web analytics platform, it is essential to have senior leadership in your corner. They will provide direction, funding and resolve problems to help it be successful.
- Alignment issues between business objectives and implementation. It is essential to start with the key metrics. What are you attempting to support? If this is missed, then the data isn’t really relevant to the business.
- Insufficient time and effort devoted to QA and data validation. Many man hours are devoted to implementation so time needs to be allocated to test at the early stage. It is so hard to regain credibility if the data was received and wasn’t accurate.
- Failure to deliver quick wins to organization. You are trying to build momentum so the early wins help build trust in the tool.
- No corporate standards or enforcement. Standards need to be put in place for business users to follow. These standards also need to be enforced to keep data retrieval and SAINT reclassifications easier.
- Multiple conflicting data sources. If data sources are different (comparing apples to oranges), this could hamper a business
- Inadequate investment in staffing. The tool is an expensive tool to only be supported by one or two individuals. There needs to be adequate resources allocated to the business intelligence team to support the business properly.
- No emphasis placed on training (initial and on-going)
- No accountability for web data.
- Lack of upgrading/updating analytics code. Important not to leave code idle. Code should always be upgraded or tweaked when important updates and changes are released (or if new functionality is released on your site that needs to be tracked).
- Reports/User log-in’s created but not used.
- No seat at the “table”. Web analytics needs to be thought of when projects are kicked off not when they are just wrapping up.
- Lack of interest in learning or caring.
Written by:
Dorian D. Regester
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Dorian,Good thoughts here. You’ve been on a tear with all these great posts! I enjoy reading them.-Rudi
Thanks DorianWe cannot have enough blog posts on this subject nor enough ways to understand these issues.We can also organize these points in the following causal hierarchy:4. Failure to deliver quick wins:|V1. Lack of top level executive endorsement and sponsorship|VPretty much all the othersItem 11 is an interesting one because it seems to be an implementation problem but its consequences are further reaching than they appear. WA is not trivial and if upper level management take the initiative and try looking at the reports they often see a messy forest. Hardly helpful in assisting them in inspiring top level executive buy-inThanks againBrian Katz – Analytics – VKI