How To Impress Your Girlfriend’s Dad with Advanced Business Analytics
Analytics is more important than the code quality of your project.
Do I have your attention now?
The rationale for using analytics(even Google Analytics for that matter) is simple: You are Learning from Data.
Chances are that your business model isn’t too complex. Doesn’t it make business sense to know the wheres, hows, and whens of your audience on your website/app? Doesn’t it also make business sense to process that knowledge to arrive at extrapolations and insights for improvements?
You say Duh! but data (and the high startup failure rates) says that a lot of us are doing it wrong.
✳️ Have A Method Behind the Madness
A few years ago, Microsoft was jealous (allegedly) of AWS' strides of success and did what big companies with deep pockets do - they hired a bunch of salespeople who went about trying to (allegedly) poach away the bigger clients from AWS (read IBM). Microsoft even offered them decades worth of free credits to “sweeten the deal”. How did AWS find out about it? Analytics.
Hopefully, the tech conglomerates won’t come after your business..yet. As of today, the biggest enemy of your business is your knowledge of Analytics or its lack thereof.
You see, thousands of years ago, the most critical analytics metric was page views. Today, there are a thousand other metrics more important than Page Views. For example, for .tech domains (a Hacker Noon sponsor) the most critical analytics metric is “number of domains searched by unique users”. You too need a more nuanced metric for your website/app’s performance.
There’s a famous story of the bet between the CEO of Aviasales (a flight aggregator) and his UX designer. Constantine, the CEO wagered that if the UX Designer could improve the conversion numbers by the power of UX alone, he (the CEO) would come to the next office party wearing a ladies’ thong. The UX designer dove deep into analytics, won the bet and the internet now has a picture of Constantine that is NSFW (Do you appreciate the irony here?).
✳️ Conversion is King
The success or the failure of your website/app depends on two key factors (apart from the - Does it make business sense?):
Did you pick the right Analytics metrics?
Did you A/B test like a madman?
This is also where a lot of startups make their biggest mistake ever - copying the UI/UX of a competitor that they like. If copying was so helpful, we’d only have one model of cars, bikes, and even computers (shudder!).
Ideally, you need a bunch of ancillary analytics that relay the true performance of a single module/unit that ties in with the other modules to make up your website/app.
For example, if your product is an API then you need to monitor the number of calls to your API, the number of users calling it, the throughput rates, the geographies, and so on. How Do you A/B test that set of permutations and combinations?
✳️ Wait a Minute. I Came here to Impress My Girlfriend’s Dad. What About That?
Don’t worry. We haven’t forgotten about you. You gotta use analytics too.
Use your knowledge of Analytics to grow his business by 30-50%. If he’s a good businessman, he’ll realize that you’re a catch for his daughter, as well as, for his business. You’ll have his blessings in no time because as we said earlier - Conversion is King.
Get started by checking out our curated list of top analytics stories and get yourself a brand new Father-in-Law in the next three to six months. Best of Luck.
