As I’m writing this post I can hear a church bell ringing from outside my hotel room. The rings, one after the other, are giving me a sense of urgency - a feeling that I have to jot down my thoughts as soon as I can before they fade slip away into the  nothingness that usually accompanies a good night’s sleep. So while I can still type with some sort of eloquence, I’d like to share some of my main take-aways from the first two days at eMetrics Toronto.

Now, keep in mind, none of this information is necessarily new or game-changing. In fact, much of it I’ve heard and read before from blogs and forums. But to hear it live, alongside peers, definitely gives it a new twist. And having the opportunity to hear stories about implementations gone bad and victories long forgotten, definitely adds that needed colour that the worlds of analysts often lack - helping us feel like we’re not alone in our data-crunching fortresses of solitude. Here are my top three take-ways thus far:

Don’t measure what you are not prepared to change - paraphrased from John Blackmore, IBM

I think this one will be a tough one to follow, but in a way I think there is some weight to this suggestion. I say this is tough because it is so “easy” to capture so much data about web interactions. Why not capture this event or that event? Why not capture this action or that action? Why not capture all of it… just in case? Half of me is this just in case kind of guy.I’ll be the first guy to admit that I’ve definitely forgotten a thing or two during my career, so having captured some data “just in case’ is like having a safety net. So I completely understand that view. However, how I understand this advice is that we shouldn’t “be lazy”.

Here me out. As consultants or analysts, if we simply capture data, just in case, we stop being part of the solution and revert to simply being data-collectors and *shiver* report generators. As professionals looking to find root problems we need to always be applying the scientific method, testing hypotheses, creating issue trees and generating insight. Our data collection, ideally, should be purposeful and targeted. Furthermore, there is another wonderful nuance to this bit of advice, being “prepared to change”. This implies there is buy-in to act on insight. This implies that there is an impetus for change. This means that what is measured matters in some tangible way to something that matters.  Brilliant.

The web is just another marketing medium - again, paraphrased from John Blackmore, IBM

This is something that I preach all the time to whomever will listen. As much as I’d love to think that the web channel is a different animal, in the end, it’s just another marketing medium with its own intricacies. It won’t be long until web analytics reports will be lumped in with other campaign results. Also, speaking towards that last point, as Andrea Bertone from 360Training.com alluded to, to make analytics reports better accepted by upper management, take a cue from the reports from the other lines of business and/or channels. The web is a viable communications and revenue channel and, as such, it should stand shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the business channels. Having analytics reports in line with those of other business channels in terms of look, language and types of insights, will go a long way towards gaining web analytics the respect it deserves. This reporting discipline is something I strongly suggest that all web analytics professionals take because it’s only a matter of time before it’s forced upon us anyways.

People’s behaviours are similar regardless of the channel - paraphrased from  Paul Tyndall, RBC

There is this notion that people behave differently depending on the touch point or channel a user is interacting with. While it’s true that the individual actions may differ - the behaviour doesn’t necessarily change. For instance, if I was an overly aggressive person, I would slam doors and yell on the phone. Different actions, yet the same behaviour: aggressiveness. While I appreciate it will take some time to categorize web behaviours according to matching offline behaviours, it definitely is something to work towards and it is something worth investigating and leveraging.

Despite my having page after page of illegible scribbles for what I like to call notes, I think these three messages stuck with me most so far and I’m hoping to learn more tomorrow. Until then… hmmm, I forgot what I forgot what I was saying - I guess it’s time for ….zzzzzzzzz