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Analyzing Analyst Struggles

Raise your hand if you are an analyst and you've run into one of these issues before: Data Discrepancies:  Your stakeholder approaches you and says, "I noticed the data in your report doesn't match the data in this other report.  Which one is correct?" No Data:   Your stakeholder asks for some data but after some further research, you realize that product team never implemented the proper tracking.  Zero.  Zilch.  Nada. Blocked Access:   Your stakeholder asks for a dashboard that requires integration from multiple data sources.  You go to query the data but realize you don't even have access to one of the databases.   Ad Hoc Request Madness:   Multiple stakeholders ask for data, dashboards, and insights all at the same time.  And they want it yesterday. Groundhog Day Questioning:   Your stakeholders ask the same questions over and over and over again. Below I've laid out some of the Top Analyst Struggles along with the impacts ...
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Analytics Excellence

I recently read a post from a founder of a consulting company about customer excellence.  He quoted a business leader who said, "Our clients know they will get all the attention and time from us that they need because we set aside enough time to serve them well." The consulting company founder believed that this concept aligned perfectly with where he wanted to take his own consulting practice.  He went on to ask himself, "How many clients can I serve at once without sacrificing excellence?"  This got me thinking about 'analytics excellence' and how much work a single analyst should take on before the customer service excellence gets sacrificed. During an interview for a company I once worked for, I asked the Director, "How many Google Analytics analysts currently support your organization?"  She responded, "One."  I said, "Just one doing the reporting and analysis?"  She responded, "No, one doing it all.  Gathering KPIs.  ...

Just A 12 Year Hibernation

Has it really been 12 years since my last blog post??  What happened?  Life & work, I suppose.  Before I start a new chapter on diving back into analytics topics on my freshly titled 'Analytics Avenue' blog, here's a rundown of my work experience and insights from the past 12 years...   Yahoo: Yahoo Web Analytics After 8 years at Yahoo, where the company had battled a hostile takeover attempt (Microsoft), fended off activist investors, tested multiple revenue generating strategies (thanks to five CEOs in 7 years), reimagined search (project Panama), struggled to unload its huge stake in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan (worth an estimated $30B), and on and on and on....they finally started closing down offices to cut costs.  Unfortunately, our small satellite office in Carlsbad, CA was one of the victims.   Yahoo Web Analytics (the rebranded IndexTools platform), was no more.  It would be packaged up in the search deal with Microsoft and I never h...

Hey retailers, it's time to step up your coupon game!

Hate to be the bearer of bad news retailers but I can't find your coupons online.  I've run countless coupon related searches (on all of the major search engines) for some of your largest brands such as Staples, Target, McDonalds, Home Depot, and CVS to name a few. To be quite honest, it's a lousy consumer experience. All I see are countless affiliate sites that claim to offer me coupons from the retailer but RARELY deliver.  Sites like Techbargains.com serve up links which you think will provide you with a coupon but all they do is redirect you to the retailer's home page.  I invite you to try it.  Click on one of the green 'Activate Coupon' buttons to access the particular coupon: http://www.techbargains.com/staplescoupons.cfm .  It tells you to 'Please wait while we activate your deal' as it downloads who knows what to your system.  Just when you get excited about being presented with a coupon that you can print out and take into the ret...

Monetizing Big Data In Yahoo Web Analytics

There's been a lot of talk/press already around Yahoo's new CEO, Scott Thompson, and his thoughts on big data at Yahoo.  Here are a few examples that have already been written since yesterday: Yahoo's New CEO Has Data Focus Can Yahoo's New CEO Thompson Harness Big Data Analytics? The Key To Yahoo's Long Term Health? Data, Says New CEO Rest assured though, Yahoo has some of the best big data geniuses around.  A company like Yahoo has to have some smart data guys when you're bringing in over 700 million monthly unique visitors to your properties each month.  Ever heard of Hadoop?  "The most well known technology used for Big Data is Hadoop. Hadoop is used by Yahoo, eBay, LinkedIn and Facebook. Google uses a proprietary version of Hadoop" And Hortonworks, a big data company that  spun out from Yahoo this past summer expects that "Half the worlds data will be on Hadoop in 5 years" So if Mr Thompson is looking to monetize "big d...

Powerful Keyword Insights In Yahoo! Clues

Not sure if you've had a chance to check out Yahoo! Clues yet, but if you haven't, I would take a look if you're responsible for managing search advertising at your company.  There is some powerful and insightful keyword data available in the Trend Analysis section. Yahoo! Clues (beta) is a search keyword trending tool.  While it gives you a peek inside what's trending for searches on Yahoo! (sports, people, places, etc), it also gives you a peek into how your business stacks up against your competition when it comes to keyword searches. One of my favorite reports under Trend Analysis tab is called Search Flow.  What Search Flow provides is "a list of the most probable previous and following user searches from an analysis of aggregated search patterns across Yahoo! Search. The top item under Previous Queries represents the most probable search term people tried before this search query. Similarly, the top item under Next Queries represents the most prob...