Solving For The What & The Why: On-demand Webinar
A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of doing a webinar for Omniture.
The title was:
Solving For The What & The Why – Why Web Analytics Should Not Be Lonely!
Web Analytics is really good at showing you "What" your customers are doing—even "When" and "How" and "How Much". But to find out "Why" they're doing the "What", you have to ask them.
The webinar covered why it is important to care about the "Why" when it comes to your customers and how qualitative customer research is a perfect complement to the quantitative "What" data from traditional web analytics reports.
As you all have now come to expect in the webinar I also share practical examples and actionable tips that you can implement right away and elevate the actionability of your data to solve both for your bottom-line and increase customer satisfaction.
I also introduce a new concept I am calling "scalable listening". We are all aware of what traditional qualitative methods are, and I cover those, but how can you overcome the challenge that the complexity of the web poses? Scalable listening.
Really fun stuff.
You can access the webinar at:
Click on: Advancing Web Analytics: Adding Qualitative Customer Data.
Alternatively:
#1: Go to directly to www.omniture.com/static/745
#2: Fill out the Omniture lead / contact info form. I am sure our friends at Omniture will be happy to get any type of information you can provide (in exchange for viewing, and this is biased of course, an excellent webinar! :)).
#3: You'll see a Download Now page with a link to the the Video.
#4: Click on the Play button (or Part 1 clickable area right under the video player controls). Part two is Eric's presentation that you might also find informative, after the context that Part 1 will help set.
#5: Sit back, get a coffee (or Red Bull!) and be "infotained"! :)
This is my second collaboration with Omniture, the first being the Marketing ROI Workshop (if you are interested check out my reflections from that series). Both times I have had fun working with the team in Orem. I especially want to thank Wes Funk for all the efforts on this webinar, Wes is very good at what he does.
Check out the webinar at your convenience, I am confident you'll find it to be of value. But please come back and let me know what you think of it (was it of value? did you learn anything? should I do more of 'em?).
Eye Candy:
To tempt you here are some of the slides you'll see (I realize I am being a tease by not sharing any context and just the pretty pictures!).
Impact on customers…..
[In the webinar there is another remember to checkout the picture underneath this one!]
Have you consummated this marriage? Not just conducted, consummated!
All this hard work in service of one singular purpose…..
New HiPPO! Why? He's special…..
Integrate or die!
[I use few to no words on my slides now, on this slide the words are there to impress you with how many benefits await you. Are you impressed / convinced?]
Do remember to come back and let me know if you found value in the webinar. Thanks.
[Like this post? For more posts like this please click here, if it might be of interest please check out my book: Web Analytics: An Hour A Day.]
November 2nd, 2007 at 11:44
Nice post! Having watched many of your webinars/online videos, these images are much upgraded :)
The "why" continues to be my main focus on using analytics. Not having a lot of qualitative testing resources currently, I have focused on trying to use bounce rates to learn more about the customer experience. I know this doesn't compare to actual surveys and usability testing, but it does seem to get a little closer to the "why" than the other metrics. I'm still looking for a quality, inexpensive online survey tool if anyone has any suggestions…
November 2nd, 2007 at 13:17
Very nicely put, what you 've just said.
The "Why" is very important because it points you to the trends. If you'll get the point, you will get the leads ;-)
Thanks for the info. Very educating.
Regards :)
November 2nd, 2007 at 13:25
Really valuable webinar Avinash! Kudos to both you and Omniture for putting this on.
While your webinar was geared towards convincing Web Analytics folks the value of qualitative data I found the the evolving limitations of various earlier qualitative methods very insightful, even though I am a User Researcher. I found your perspective very interesting.
Thank you for continuing to keep the quality of your blog at such a high level.
November 4th, 2007 at 22:35
Great talk! As always your tips are very practical and the ideas very implementable.
With all the other stuff going on in the space, and the tone of that conversation, it is nice to see a great collaboration between two great parties, Omniture and You.
It was very valuable, thanks.
Stephen
November 5th, 2007 at 08:41
Great webinar Avinash – enjoyed it as always. Can't agree more with the (qualitative + quantitative) approach. The state you have is ideal, where we get the qualitative feedback online and immediately after the experience. We are at an intermediate stage of quantitative + qualitative feedback from Market Research after the fact (better than quantitative only, but definitely not as good as doing a survey post facto online).
-Ned
November 5th, 2007 at 09:41
Avinash-
Don't forget the even more important question than "Why?"…
Why not?
I've found that this type of qualitative understanding (only accurately defined through observational research) is much more valuable than almost anything else you can do (even quant!).
Cheers,
Jonathan
November 5th, 2007 at 10:06
Jonathan : Excellent clarification! My implicit assumption is that if you understand the "Why" then that quest is partly (or if not selfishly!) to solve for "Why Not".
You have stressed a very important point in your comment and I agree.
Let's make sure we understand "Why Not" for all things we want done on our websites and "Why In God's Name Are You Doing That" for things that our customers are doing regardless! :)
-Avinash.
November 6th, 2007 at 12:31
Avinash, As a convert from the other side of the consumer insight world (agency planner who is now devoted to the behavioral data revealed through site analytics), I'm thrilled to see you advocating for supplementing click streams with qual data from surveys and consumer observation.
And your concrete practical suggestions for vendors and tools for scalable listening is especially appreciated.
To your rec's on using surveys, I'd add another suggestion, that I've learned through experience:
–When it comes to softer questions about qualitative consumer experience, it's usually best to ask the same question a couple different ways.
–For instance if you want to understand how consumers feel about a customer service component on a site, you can ask them directly with an open-ended question or with a close-ended list of adjectives. But I’d also add a question that approached the question from another angle. For example: I might ask something like: “The service on this site most closely resembles which of the following professional service people in your offline life: Your family physician who knows your health history, an accountant who is focused narrowly on getting you the maximum return, your personal trainer who inspires you to do more, etc.”
–Why? A couple reasons: Experienced surveys writers know that a single word can throw off the data, and while pro-survey writers always test first, most of us do not have that luxury. Two questions asking the same question in different ways give you a back-up if get something wrong.
Second, and as important: just as multiple sources of click-stream data enable you to make more detailed and sophisticated responses, so do multiple qualitative responses help you make more insightful and authoritative interpretations.
–Finally: just as the same old questions usually lead to the same answers, new experimental questions often lead to new answers, which uncover new brand possibilities.
In my experience, the best research inspires as well as validates.
Thanks for inspiring
sk
November 7th, 2007 at 10:23
Thanks again for a remarkably topical (for me) post to your blog. We are just kicking off a customer survey to understand our customer needs so we can do some alignment with our analytics data and your pointers are invaluable.
November 12th, 2007 at 00:52
[...] As always, Avinash Kaushik writes about something that is topical and useful for me in a work context. Solving for the What and the Why is a great post which deals with the need to *horrors* actually talk to your clients to find out what they need. After lots of trawling through analytics data I've realised just that. I think the real challenge is finding the right survey sample group, but I'm hoping that we can get that right. As usual, there are some great pragmatic tips which Avinash highlights which I think I can put in place with minimal disruption. [...]
April 2nd, 2008 at 10:50
Cameron,
I was recently on washingtonpostjobs.com and saw a great survey 'dot' floating around. I WISH I could remember the name, but can't. Perhaps if you go on the site you'll see it. I've used Survey Monkey in the past and been relatively happy with it. For the price, you can't beat it.