Informed Decision Making

As broadband penetration becomes a focus for Government and more and more services are offered online, usability and accessibility is fast becoming one of the hottest topics in website design with informed decision-making receiving a great deal of attention, particularly as even the smallest amount of empirical facts can vastly improve the probability of making correct decisions.

A working example on Jacob Nielsen’s blog clearly demonstrates how data beats guesses. In a discussion group, 100% of the designers who studied external data were right about their design choices, compared to 25% of the designers who relied on personal opinion.

It’s important to understand that decision making for digital channels is fundamentally different to the days of using traditional business intelligence, and, as more effective decision-making can result in faster goal realisation, there are significant cost savings to be had.

Also, by using data, at least the mistakes you make will be educated mistakes, and with each mistake, you become smarter, and your next step becomes more intelligent.

“An educated mistake is better than no action at all” Says Stuart Gold, VP at Omniture.

That’s not to say studying data doesn’t come without issues. As the pace at which decisions need to be made in the digital ecosystem gets faster, often there simply isn’t enough information available in order to make them confidently. This is why analysing consumer insight and applying a more action-based approach to using analytics tools can only add to a departments’ ability to optimise the service they provide.

Here’s a couple of tips on the use of aggregated usage data by leaders in the web analytics field:

• Change the focus from un-actionable aggregated numbers like visits or average page vews per visitor. Instead, find key sources of traffic and run controlled experiments to measure offline impact
• Don’t focus on total visitors or unique visitors. Instead, focus on interesting insights about the ways users are navigating the site, and use this to drive changes to the site design. Amazon has been adopting this approach for years and has built a world-class business on it. If it works them – surely it’s good enough for public services.

 

Image courtesy of Parks Canada