Most Analytics Packages Don't Tell The Whole Story

I was doing some digging on the general topic of Analytics over the past few weeks and have been trying to wrap my mind around what makes a good analytics package. It may be different for different people, but I am not sure it should be. So I have been searching and think I might have found something that works.

So as I have said before on this blog, I am baffled by all the "me too" companies that are filling up the space on their website or in their marketing slicks with their story about Analytics. It has given me a bit of heart burn for a while now and still makes me shake my head.

But recently I started to dig in a bit more and try to distill down a clear difference between what I consider useful Analytics and what most people put out which is enhance reporting. I am not sure if this will help others very much, but what I have come up with is that Analytics should be a tool that gets to the real reason WHY the data is showing one trend or another. It should not just be about the fact that you can show the data. It should be about giving you the tools to interrogate the data to understand why so that you can take action. So much of the work with tools that people are calling Analytics is manual and human based educated guesses about WHY things are trending a certain way.

I think it is valuable to have great reports, I think it is great to have them in color and in multiple digital formats for different devices and consumption styles. But, instead of worrying about looking at the data and forcing humans to make so many decisions, why don't we use some brain power to build tools that actually tell us why someone is calling, why someone is going to the website, why they are upset, why my hold times are through the roof, why why why.... Because most of what I am seeing is helping us see the what and not giving us the why.

Do you agree?