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Analytics basics: Getting the right numbers right

July 02, 2008 | Internet Marketing

Online marketers must get the right numbers right and keep them right. When it comes to marketing optimization, good quality data is a core component.

A good marketing analyst can sense when something doesn’t look right. In my experience, if something looks odd, it probably is odd and isn’t real behavior. Sudden changes in trends, steps in the data, spikes, and dips are all potentially symptomatic of artificial impacts on data. If they can’t be explained by real-world events, it’s worth digging into the data to see if there’s anything untoward happening, like changes to the tool’s configuration, new site monitoring tools being put in place, changes to the hosting environment, and so on.

Getting good data integrity is not a one-off event. It’s an ongoing process. Be wary of the potential impact that changes to your site or tracking environment will have on your data and plan accordingly. Take time to reconcile your data on a regular basis to see if there are any divergent trends. With these basic processes in place, you might avoid that sinking feeling at some point in the future.

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