How much value is your website data giving you?

I'm on a mission to make sure companies get more value from the online data they collect. Why?
Well most companies now know that they can plug analytics into their website, ranging from the free (but still incredibly useful) Google Analytics, to paid for products such as: Coremetrics, Adobe [yes, we do still call it Omniture] and WebTrends.

For me the diagram below highlights the increasing value of website analytics and their importance to the business.

Reading the diagram from the bottom up, you firstly move on from a position of no data (or badly collected data) by setting up correct data capture processes. This can be anything as simple as collecting log files from your web server of visitor traffic. However by taking the next step (e.g. implementing website analytics) an organisation makes the move to having information it can use, now typically presented in the form of tables, diagrams, etc.

But, that is typically where most companies stop. However there's an additional layer above that, delivered by carrying out data analysis on the available information and creating valuable online insight.

How can companies stay ahead in the 21st Century?

Business life is hard right now and even the large corporates are having to examine everything they do to stat ahead. Here’s some of my high-level thoughts on the trends andapproaches that are shaping the modern digital workplace and therefore how competitive edge can still be maintained:

1. Digital DNA

Online is not a 'bolt on' to the customer's life, it is howthey live their life now; digital has become part of the customer DNA. Theyadopt, use and integrate technology all the time, to either save time or wastetime. Businesses therefore need to put themselves in the mind of thedigitally-savvy customer or just think like the customer they actually are.This is especially true of the newer generation (Generation Y / Millenials /etc.) who are ‘Digital Natives’, for whom most cannot remember a time beforethe Internet and the use of multiple screens is an everyday occurrence.

The aim is therefore to create understanding, encourageinnovative & agile ‘web 2.0’ thinking within a company and learn how to apply this within the modern working environment.

2. Customer-centric 

The concept of ‘User Centred Design’ has been successfullyutilised for over a decade now to create online experiences that put the userat the heart of the process, rather than just being a passive node that has todeal with whatever interface the system creates at the end.

This turns some business processes on their heads, as theway some corporate departments and product catalogues are structured are notnecessarily the way that users want to browse, search, consume, etc.

Be prepared to turn things upside down if it means thedifference between doing what you’ve always done and what needs to be done tomove forwards.

3. The connected corporate ecosystem

As more systems become interconnected and as we all learnthat data does not have to be re-entered if it already exist online in someform…. This will provide the opportunity for some data (e.g. inferred from auser’s browsing history) to be integrated with other data (e.g. explicitknowledge about a user’s age, purchase habits, etc.) and to significantlyreduce human errors such as those from simple data re-keying. The semantic webis almost upon us, is your business ready?

4. Use of Data for insight

Thanks to the Internet, every 2 days the human race nowcreates as much information as it did in its entire history up to 2003. Thisgrowth in ‘big data’ creates its own challenges (e.g. the storage and abilityto quickly access the right data, re-posted mis-information, etc.) as well asits own opportunities, such as an unprecedented amount of useful data on userbehaviour.  This therefore facilitates afar greater level of personalisation and supports various real-time activities& incentives such as individual offers and rewards (perhaps the very reasonwhy mega supermarket Tesco used & subsequently purchased DunnHumby forcustomer insight and data driven marketing purposes) plus then the future predictivecapabilities that may come from this.

Making sense of Wikileaks and what it means for Government

Two very different men spent much of December in prison. What links these two is not just their incarceration (by Chinese and the UK courts) but because they have, in their own way, been accused of challenging the power of the state.

Liu Xiaobo is the spokesperson for political reforms in China, a campaigner for human rights including the freedom of speech and of the press. He recently won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize for his long and non-violent struggle despite being held as a political prisoner in the People’s Republic.
Julian Assange is the figurehead for Wikileaks, a website that has recently released more than 250,000 diplomatic cables (internal emails) that have embarrassed and angered the US Government. He spent much of December pacing around a small stone room in Wandsworth prison.
Both men are heads of movements that some say subvert the very fabric that is needed to hold governments and society together. Others say these men stand as the standard-bearers of the one thing Governments can no longer hold onto... information.
Viruses such as colds (or something nastier) are usually spread by humans coming into contact or near contact with other humans. Typically the bigger the population, the more and faster the virus is spread.

Information can therefore be seen as having the same properties as a virus, a pretty virulent one! It used to just utilise humans as hosts, but with each successive technology from books onwards it can infect more people, more efficiently and more effectively. Once man could write down and copy information, it could be given to others, and now with the Internet and the social media technologies that sit upon it, information can be spread globally, instantly.
The speed and scale of information transference now creates big problems for those organisations who want to restrict it, typically Governments. Huge amounts of data can now be copied onto media the size of a fingernail or transferred at megabit speed. Secrets that would previously be accessed by a handful of individuals are no longer secret for very long if that system can allow the replication of the information virus (e.g. by having it collected to the Internet or by allowing any form of electronic copying from it). For example: The recently leaked cables of Wikileaks were apparently taken off a computer that allowed compact discs to be updated, which meant a single disgruntled American security operative could copy the information to his Lady Gaga CD!
So what do Governments do about this? Well, I think they have three options;

1. Continue to do what they have been doing so far (ongoing treatment). This means they do nothing drastic and carry on trying to lock down access and copying ability of computers that have access to secret information. However, given the viral nature of information, this will no-doubt mean there will be further breaches in the future. Just like trying to prevent the common cold, this situation becomes futile and acceptance of the situation results in regular infection. It’s also likely that reoccurrence of the situation will result in the eroding of trust in Western Governments and those they work with.

2. Be heavy-handed about data breaches (quarantine). Although Julian Assange’s stint in prison is not as a direct result of his Wikileaks activity (he’s accused of sexual offences in Sweden), only a few would doubt that there aren’t forces at work behind the scenes to try and get him to a court in the USA for ‘Cablegate’. However, it is possible for America and others to adopt a more zero-tolerance approach to those who compromise their information security boundaries. After all, it has had a stricter approach to terrorism (Guantanamo Bay anyone?) than it does for other crimes (the courts, right to legal counsel, etc.). However, adopting more Chinese-type approaches has huge potential human rights consequences and is definitely not the activity of a modern and progressive Government.

3. Understand and adapt (look for a cure). This is not the 1900’s, it’s the Information Age. Wikileaks may have caused an example to have been made of Mr Assange (especially if he does get carted-off to the USA to face trial), but also gives the ideal opportunity for self-reflection about the storage, treatment and classification of what exactly should be considered secret in a digital world.

The openness and transparency of the ‘modern always-connected’ organisation is a reality that companies and brands have had to accept in recent times. Is it not the time for our Governments to do the same?

Hopefully, before evryone goes Gaga!

Turn your site map upside down

We've been working with a client on redeveloping their website from its present incarnation. This current site has a homepage with an introduction animation and some navigation. This in-turn leads you to further pages (with even more under that).

Creating a site map of the pages you get a typical tree structure, with the homepage at the top and all the content on the lower 'branches'.

However, does this actually meet the needs of the orgainsation's (potential and existing) customers and search engines?

Customers want instant information about the organisation. They want to know some of the stuff on the lower levels and don't necessarily want to have to forrage for it through the navigation to find it.

Search engines also want content to spider and understand the site. The more this content is relevant and updated, the more likely the spiders are to return.

This therefore means exposing the content as quickly and effectively as possible and dispensing with conventional information hierarchy... or in other words turning your site map upside down! Content rightly therefore becomes the empowering factor.

When mentioning this to an Information Architect friend of mine he did questions whether this would necessarily work for all sites, especially those that have significant content and functionality.

However, is this not what the BBC news homepage and other such resources try to do?

Information Aesthetics

Following up on my previous 'information visualisation' posts for mapping the influence, I've been researching the 'aesthetics of information presentation'. Primarily I've focused on the different ways in which data can be displayed to make it more useful to the researcher.

This has led me to the Infosthetics site run by Andrew Vande Moere from the University of Sydney:

http://infosthetics.com/

This site is a rich collection of article on different data visualisations and in doing so shows the beauty they can create.

One particulalrly intersting and clever project that is mentioned is the

Time Travel Tube Map by http://www.tom-carden.co.uk/

This interactive graph reorganises the London Underground map based on the times of travel from that station.

It goes to show that for columns and tables of data, usefulness and aesthetics aren't necessarily at opposite ends of the spectrum.