Hopefully you’re focusing on creating compelling content as step number one, and gauging it’s popularity as step number two.
If you build it, they will come. (and then you can count them)
I guess I’ve just been preoccupied lately with building and producing things, and all this talk of analytics just bores me to death. You caught me at a bad time. Congratulations if you have enough web resources to specialize.
“We deploy a team of web producers and writers, oh and, that guy over there in the corner, all he does is look at Google analytics.”
I’m into the making, not so much the measuring. On the simplest level though, stats are a great way to guage popularity, guage how much people care.
I’ve been curious about the kind of traffic that the amazing photography features at Boston.com’s “Big Picture” have been getting.
Alan from The Big Picture writes:
In a single day, last month the entry on Hurricane Ike was served up over 1 million times. The 28 images on that page add up to a bit more than 5.2 megabytes. Multiply that a million times, and we (The Boston Globe) ended up serving nearly 5 terabytes of images for just one entry from one blog in less than 24 hours (not counting the HTML or the thousands of comments). And we topped one million daily pageviews at least five times last month.
Creating and displaying content that people care about. Storytelling. Crafting experiences that move people. At the core of that desire is something that I think drives most artists, and even drives the not-so-much-artist-but-two-bit-web-designer-producer-developer people like myself. Creating things valued, things appreciated.
So much discussion lately on higher ed blogs about analytics. Stats. Optimization. Tracking. Analysis. Measuring.
Sure, analyzing traffic is important. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Right Right. Of course. But I’m amazed and perplexed at how INDEPTH some of your reccomendations and techniques go. It must be nice to have that kind of time on your hands, Dr PageRank.
I’m having thoughts of accountants and bean counters. But lets not go there. The web is a wide arena requiring many fields of specialization. What’s exciting to some may be boring to others.
I’m not saying analytics aren’t important. Anytime you plan/build/deploy a website, you must first define goals, as in things you want your visitors TO DO. And if you aren’t paying attention to how people USE your site, ..if you aren’t utilizing analytics to study and shape your traffic into desired outcomes, then your website is basically a glorified brochure and you might as well be working in 1995.
Again though, cart before the horse: All this talk of analyzing, analyzing, analyzing, …and less discussion lately about crafting/creating that which you’re so enthused about measuring. I’m impressed and somewhat curious, but at the same time mystified. No, mostly bored.
Key takeaways:
1, This post is pretty much a rant directed at EduGuru and Kyle James.
2. I’m a jerk.
3. You should unsubscribe to my feed in protest. Cite some kind of clause about immaturity and pettiness.
I’ve been hooked on EduGuru for as long as I’ve been a University web developer, and now I’m complaining about the nature of 1/8 of his recent posts. That’s like people in LA complaining about the rain.
Sorry Kyle.
October 2nd, 2008 at 7:28 am
well said. seo is a big deal for small schools w/weak brands and funny names. analytics are important (natch), no need to argue that, but content is king and i would venture a guess that most don’t have the staff to specialize. the content creators are the same ones posting the content and tracking and analyzing and seo-ing everything as well. i wish that i could hire a number cruncher to pore over our site stats all day while i created fun-ness, but that’s not happening.
college web guy, your point is well taken. i’m bored w/this analytics-obsessed shizen.
October 2nd, 2008 at 7:58 am
Drew,
Honestly I’m getting pretty sick of web analytics myself, but here’s the thing. I have THREE presentations by the end of the year about web analytics. So yeah… if I don’t have INDEPTH content ready and am really thinking about it that way then it sounds like I don’t know what I’m talking about. So here’s my promise to you. I have one more post to go live before HighEdWeb next week then I’m digging into my backlog of ideas about everything but analytics.
Fair enough?
October 2nd, 2008 at 8:00 am
Oh… and thanks for all the backlinks!
October 2nd, 2008 at 8:13 am
HAHAHAHA!
October 2nd, 2008 at 8:32 am
Let me just apologize again for this post. It was unprofessional and sophomoric. Kyle should pick something i’ve posted here and grill me for it publicly. There are so many things to pick from.
October 2nd, 2008 at 10:01 am
[...] sitting in the queue ready to go, but it looks like the Higher Education Community is starting to rebel against my recent analytics addiction. I understand it is undervalued and unappreciated in Higher Education, but that’s a post [...]
October 2nd, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Analytics: Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em.
I happen to work at a university that is all about science and technology, and most of the administrators have backgrounds in engineering, which means they want data. So yes, analytics are important, up to a point. You can drown in data, but you can also use [read: manipulate] it to help sell your cause.
Anyone interested in how the data geeks are taking over the world ought to read the book Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-By-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart. I posted a mini-review of that book (and two others) back in July.
We intuitive thinkers may not like it, but sometimes it really is all about the data.
P.S. - Kyle is like a god to me. LOL
October 2nd, 2008 at 12:28 pm
How did I get lumped in with Kyle? : )
Seriously, though, I think you bring up good points. Content is *always* the most important. I almost blame the web analytics community for souring WA in the eyes of non-ecommerce site owners. It’s *not* all about conversion. To me it’s about usability before anything.
Anyway, uhm … thanks for the links? ; )
Shelby
October 3rd, 2008 at 7:35 am
“I’ve been hooked on EduGuru for as long as I’ve been a University web developer”
As the official historian (?) of the higher ed web blogosphere, I have to say that this statement is problematic: YOU’ve been a University web developer far more longer than the eduGuru blog has been serving to the community Kyle’s insights on Analytics.
Now, let me go back to reading Kyle’s latest post about Analytics.
October 3rd, 2008 at 8:29 am
I would strongly argue against the comment “If you build it, they will come.” I’ve seen that ideology get taken way too far out of hand in Higher Education. Having a little marketing background I’d suggest that you consider it “If you build it, 10% will come.” That seems to be a good average of the number of visitors/participants to a particular tool. After all, everything doesn’t apply to everyone. Also don’t forget that marketing & promotions can increase that but I doubt you’ll ever get near 80% participation (after all the rule of thumb is 30% don’t give a care).
So before you start your next project make sure to think about the ROI; is 10% really worth the effort or the cost?
Oh yeah, before everyone says they are exceeding that % the numbers above are based on total audience numbers (not specific target groups). Targeted audience % is not comparable across all projects.
October 10th, 2008 at 12:22 am
[...] week there was a post at College Web Guy about being *bored* with analytics. The gist of the post was that while analytics is important, it [...]