Business analytics – the data you gather about your customers, your sales, and your business are important. They can help you decide where to focus your attention. They can help you streamline your business, and ultimately they can help you provide more value about your customers and grow your business. However, to get the best return on investment, it’s important that you identify, set up, and effectively use your business data. Let’s take a look at the best practices for gathering and using your business analytics.
Real Time Metrics
One of the most useful ways that you can use your business analytics is in real time evaluations. You may not want to know how your email campaign did last month, but rather you may want to know right now how your CTR (Click Through Rate) is performing. This information enables you to implement immediate tactics to improve and/or leverage the tactic. For example, if you discover that many people are clicking on a link in an email, but they’re not buying once they get to the sales page, then you can immediately tweak the sales page and monitor the change in conversion. Real time metrics can make a significant difference in your bottom line results.
Aligned With Your Goals
Gathering data simply for the sake of gathering it is a colossal waste of your precious time. Don’t gather information about your business or your business performance unless it supports your goals. For example, if you’re not focused on growing your email list why would you bother to measure and assess any data related to it? What good does that do you? That being said, it is important to create systems to measure data for established goals. If you want to increase conversion on your sales page by 10 percent then the only way to know if you’ve succeeded is to create a system to measure and analyze conversions.
Streamline Your Business Analytics
There’s no need to utilize ten different tools to gather and measure your business analytics. Many of the existing technologies you’re already using do provide analytics. However, there are also technologies or services that provide you with a wide variety of data. Streamline your systems so that you can go to one place to gather and review the majority of your information. It’s one of the reasons that Google Analytics is so popular. Not only is it free, it also provides you with a wealth of information. And it’s relatively easy to set up new campaigns and systems to measure data that are important to you and your business.
As you get started setting up your systems for measuring and reviewing business data, think about how you can make the process accurate, easy, and reliable. Metrics are important to your business success, but they shouldn’t consume a vast amount of your time. Simplify, automate, and evaluate.
