What is Actionable Data?

Data is not in itself inherently actionable. You have to make it so. If you’ve set up your Google Analytics (or other web analytics tool) properly, you’re likely getting lots of data. Great. Now what?

Now you have to make that data actionable. You look at your dashboard and it’s got some pretty graphs and various numbers. On their own, the metrics on your Visitors, Referrers and Bounce Rate don’t mean anything.

They’re all meaningless measurements unless you have established your Key Performance Indicators and goals for each. (Discussed in an earlier post.)

What makes data actionable?

If you decided that your acceptable bounce rate is 40%, then 36.8% is success. If your goal for new visits was 55% of your total visits, then 50.4% indicates something isn’t working in your strategy and it’s time to fix it.

Realizing that you are not reaching your goals is not enough to make the data actionable. That’s just the first step. The second step is drilling down the data as much as possible to find from where the problem is stemming.

You dig a little deeper and discover that you implemented a new marketing offer and were expecting a bump of new visitors from this effort, but it hasn’t happened yet. What’s the hold up? You look at the landing page, it looks fine. You look at the ad copy on the PPC ads and discover there’s no call to action! That could definitely account for the lack of new visitors.

However, you’re only halfway through making this data actionable. John Lovett (2012) from Wildfire Interactive writes, “follow up your analysis with a recommendation for improvement that actually solves the problem such as refining the campaign to target a specific segment of your audience, which will get you back on track to accomplish one of your corporate goals” (para. 4).

So, your next step is finding out who is responsible for the ad copy. Now you need to communicate to them the issue, what needs to be done to fix it, and (here’s what I would add to Lovett’s advice) why the fix is necessary for reaching the business goal. If you don’t tie the fix back to the metrics and the original business goals, it is more likely the directive can be lost in someone’s to-do list.

A more optimal set up would be to let people know which performance indicators they are accountable for before a campaign is launched. That way, when you tie the fix back to the metric it will create more of a sense of urgency.  A clear understanding of the delegation of responsibilities as well as a chain of accountability for KPI’s is the key to making data actionable.

Ideally, when you look at that dashboard, you already know who is responsible for the performance of each metric. As you drill down, there is already a person or department that you have in mind that is the go-to person for these indicators. Data doesn’t take action. People do.

References

Lovett, J. (2012, January 31) 3 Steps for Converting Data to Action. Clickz.com. Retrieved from http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2142086/steps-converting-action