Interactive Austin 2009 - Keynote

There always are life lessons as I draw while tradeshowing.  Today’s were:

1. Sharpen the pencils before leaving home.

2. Really, 104 pencils are too many for a quick sketch.

It is that latter mismatch of investment in accuracy vs. probable degree of impact on outcome that becomes meaningful for web analytics.

An audience member at the Metrics and Measurement morning panel at Austin Interactive 2009 asked about finding benchmarks for an ongoing children’s public health initiative website. After suggesting tangibles (see if other large states are interested in comparing notes , for instance),  Ian Strain Seymour of Austin’s Apogee Search offered some advice on how much time and energy to invest in validating, verifying, comparing, scrubbing etc any one measure.

Only if the measured value of the metric will cause changes in how things are done at your organization does it then make sense to go above and beyond to be SURE you have confidence in the measure.

Otherwise, three shades of blue are plenty.