With this end of summer issue, I am very happy to welcome Judah Phillips (bio here) as our guest writer. I have known Judah for many years, since I think it is fair to say that we both belong to the first generation of digital analysts, back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s when we were all trying to lay down the foundation of our field. Judah is a very bright man, not afraid of digging in the very often arcane details of Digital Analytics. I must confess however that I was absolutely intrigued and thrilled when I learn that 1) he would publish a book, and that 2) that book would be about implementing the Digital Analytics function in an organization, and not about the how to use a popular platform. To me, the timing of this book could not be better; I have spent the last several months thinking about how my firm could better help businesses implement the whole function, as my recent series on Governance testifies. So, this is why I asked Judah to introduce his opus to our readers. Needless to say, this is one very important book you will have to read this year.
As for me, I offer some thoughts about optimization, one big obsession of analysts, with its rewards and, yes, pitfalls.
When I first started writing my new book “Building a Digital Analytics Organization” I did it because I knew there was a right way and wrong way to maximize the creation of economic value from using digital data, analytics, and research to help people make better decisions about planning, performance, and strategy. And no one … Continued
Quite a lot of Digital Analytics, and plain Analytics for that matter, is about optimization. I mean by optimization the whole set of activities, with analytics and testing at their foundation, done in order to improve the ratio of X doing Y. The most typical manifestation of optimization in Digital Analytics is increasing conversion rates. … Continued