And We Know This How?

"It's all about the analytics, we use big data to drive insights"

You'll hear phrases like this from a multitude of different companies in very different market places, but do they really understand what it is they are saying?

We Need Something for the Website

Far too often analytics is used purely as a sales tool, its perfectly valid to quote figures and statistics about your product or service that show it in a good light to convince people of its merit. But, if you only ever use analytics to validate answers you've already decided upon to questions you've already defined you're missing the opportunity that data can give you to better understand your company, the market you're in and your customers.

Analytics should be taken for what it is no matter what it shows, whether its inconclusive or even negative. Don't assume that because you don't get the answer you want that you must just be doing the analysis wrong.

Who Knows What This All Means

Big data is a very misunderstood concept, its about so much more than just scale, its about,

• Volume
• Variety
• Velocity
• Variability
• Veracity

Big data is a large amount of data, covering a wide range of areas, from a lot of different sources, of varying quality that can change rapidly and is unpredictable.

Its complex because your customers, and all human beings, are a complicated bunch who'll exhibit unpredictable behaviour, only by having an open-mind about how they are interacting with your product or service will you gain true insight into how to improve.

Trying to forecast what big data is going to tell you is a fools errand and misses the point entirely, if you think you understand big data, you don't understand big data.

The analysis of big data should be used to provide answers to questions you didn't know you were supposed to be asking, to show trends you weren't expecting and to identify patterns you don't fully understand.

In the long term its much more beneficial to expect the data to show you what you’re doing wrong then to assume it will confirm you've been right all along.

Be Careful What You’re Analysing

As a demonstration that you have to understand the context and circumstances in which your data was collected and what it is actually showing you, a famous study in America attempted to show if peoples twitter feed could be used to show the state of the economy especially unemployment.

So they searched for certain keywords in tweets, one of which was "jobs", they saw some unusual patterns in the data, unfortunately the data they had was collected at the time of the death of Steve Jobs, patterns don't always mean what you may think they mean.

So approach analytics with a cautionary attitude, have a predisposition to negativity and an enthusiasm for improvement, if you do your best to prove you’re getting it wrong and fail then you’re truly going to be getter it right.