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Why You Should Get an Independent Analytics Audit
Digital analytics is a complex field, and all too often business owners pay for complex analytics packages but then fail to make good use of them because the data being presented is not actionable or easy to understand.
Your marketing executives may present you with charts that show how their campaign was a resounding success, pushing huge numbers of visitors to your website, but there is more to marketing than just visitors. If you want to make sure that your company really is moving in the right direction, then you need to make an effort to confirm that your analytics efforts are measuring the right KPIs.
Asking the Right Questions
An analytics audit is a good way to make sure that your team is asking the right questions. Companies that are specialists in analytics understand how important it is to ask the right questions and understand what each KPI can be used to reveal.
In most cases, the mistakes that teams make when trying to get used to analytics are just that - mistakes. The teams are not trying to manipulate anyone or over-inflate their performance. Rather, they don’t understand industry best practices, and they subconsciously fall prey to confirmation bias, picking the KPIs that look strongest without understanding why they are doing it.
Since auditors do not have any agenda, and they have a lot of experience, they know what they are looking for and know which data sources will provide a real picture of the health of your business.
Security Matters Too
Another often overlooked area of analytics is security. Whenever you are collecting data, there is always the issue of privacy and company security to contend with. Is any of the information you are collecting traceable back to specific customers? Does any of it reveal sensitive information about your company? Who has access to this information? Are the people who have access to it trained in how to handle the data, and working under an NDA if necessary? Is the data stored in compliance with the Data Protection Act?
These are all issues that you must think about if you are embarking on a serious long-term analytics plan, and they are things that an auditor will help you to navigate safely and efficiently. If you haven’t had an audit done before, or your last one was more than a year ago, you should seriously consider getting your policies checked.
Tim
