Feeling Like a Report Monkey? How to Educate Your Clients into Savvy Data Consumers

If you're reading this article (which you are), you might fit this profile:

BUT...

Your bosses keep asking for vanity metrics – metrics like pageviews and visits (and “hits”!) that look impressive but are meaningless.

If you’re like most web analysts, you’d agree that web analytics is waaaayyy under-utilized in the public sector…

But are you guilty of passively “taking orders” for analytics reports from your clients? Or are you actively trying to bring clients over to “the bright side”?

Let’s take a quick look at what separates Report Monkeys from Analysis Ninjas, before covering some sage and saucy tips for HOW you can get your clients to be savvy data consumers...

Avinash Kaushik makes an excellent distinction between web reporting (aka data puking) and web analysis:

Avinash gives these two examples of web reporting:

And this example of web analysis:

Take a close look at those images. Do you see the difference?

The first image is of a data-dump report, and the second image is of a data-dump dashboard.

The common element? They’re both data dumps! In both cases there is:

But look at the third image. In that dashboard there is:

So to summarize what web analysis is supposed to do:

So you know what good web analysis is. How do you get your clients and bosses to ask for that web analysis, instead of constantly asking for pageviews and “hits”?

Through a combination of education and persuasion.

In this section I cover a few quick tips for educating/nudging your clients toward becoming savvy data consumers. In the next section I cover six proven principles of persuasion that will make your in-house advocacy even more powerful.

(A quick definition of actionable metrics: “…a number that indicates an improvement…and the improvement is directly connected to your organizational online business goal(s).”)

When you ask clients what they want to measure, sometimes they “don’t know what they don’t know”, so they say “I want to measure everything!”

You can avoid this by, first (as covered in #1), asking clients about their business objectives, then, second, grouping metrics into categories to start the discussion. Grouping metrics into categories will encourage your clients to think above the level of vanity metrics like pageviews.

How you group metrics can flow from the priorities of your organization, or you can use the framework I’ve developed for measuring the performance of your web presence (i.e. group your metrics into these categories: Needs, Awareness, Access, Knowledge, Efficiency, Effectiveness, Economy, and Satisfaction).

Once you’ve nailed down some metrics for your clients, run the reports for those metrics and present them to clients, to confirm that this is what they need.

When you present initial metrics to clients, it’s a great moment to have a discussion about tying metrics to outcomes, and nudge them closer to a performance measurement mindset.

Now, maybe you don’t need to educate your clients and bosses as much as you need to persuade them to use web analytics better. Well, it just so happens there’s a framework for that!

The framework I’m talking about is psychologist Robert Cialdini’s six principles of persuasion (which were introduced in Cialdini’s classic book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion)

The six principles are below. In the sections that follow I provide suggestions for how to use them to get your clients and bosses onside:

(Note: Cialdini now calls this principle “Consensus”, but I think the original name - “social proof” – is still more fitting.)

This principle relies on the power of popularity to motivate behavior.

Simply put, the Social Proof principle means “rather than relying on our own ability to persuade others, we can point to what many others are already doing, especially many similar others”.  

This principle means that people follow the lead of others who they perceive as powerful or in positions of authority.

Sometimes this human instinct can result in frightening outcomes.

Ever hear of the Milgram obedience study? In that classic study, psychologist Stanley Milgram tested how far people would go in following the instructions of an authority figure. Participants were divided into "teachers" and "learners", with the teachers instructed to administer an increasingly severe electric shock every time the learner answered a question incorrectly.

The main finding from the study: that only a small minority of people will challenge authority, even when people are told to do something that couple potentially kill others.

It’s a natural human tendency to want to behave (and to be seen by others as behaving) in a consistent manner.

You’ve probably seen public figures (like politicians) referred to as “flip-flopping” on issues. Is that ever seen as a positive thing? No. Flip-flopping is always a negative, which supports the idea that we – as human beings – value consistency.

So once a person has committed to something (a behaviour, a cause, a belief, etc.) they want to maintain that commitment consistently.  

Simply put, people are more easily persuaded by people they like.

This principle relies on the indebtedness that people feel when someone has done something for them.

Apparently this is hard-wired in human beings, and some academics attribute the survival of the human species to it.

When something is scarce, we perceive it to be more valuable.

Can you use scarcity to motivate your clients and bosses to adopt sophisticated web analysis?

Your mission (should you choose to accept it) is to evolve from a Report Monkey to an Analysis Ninja.

How do you know when you’ve become an Analysis Ninja? When you’re spending at least 75% of your time doing analysis that delivers actionable insights (not spending 75% of your time “puking data”, i.e. churning out web analytics reports).

There are LOTS of things you can do to get your clients and bosses onside with your mission:

Educate your clients and bosses:

Persuade your clients and bosses by using the “6 principles of persuasion”:

Do you have any tips to add? 

Please share them in the Comments below!