Alright. Here I am working through some analytics trending of my Twitter, Facebook, www.adronbhall.com, LinkedIn, and other various sources of traffic. Here's the frustrating part. I don't mean a little frustrating, I am talking about a-grade I almost want to break something frustrating. I have bit.ly, Webtrends Analytics, a database with cross-correlated results, a Twitter monitor in another window, and other little apps to track what is going on. Where does most of this data come together? In my head. Why do I have to manage everything this way, it is damn frustrating!
So here is an idea, and I am just thinking outside the box here (as I always do since nobody will let me in the box anyway :p ). How about these things get merged into a good solid single interface. Maybe even some of the environments get rolled together in addition to the tracking analytics and reports. How about a solid dashboard that allows drilldown into the various mediums to allow actual interaction with the data and platforms? Imagine a dashboard, that reports the analytics for all these things but then lets you just kick in and start tweeting or posting the latest bits to Facebook. Why have a half dozen or more applications and web sites open.
What we need here is some technology leadership.
Others have discussed this recently and are looking for some results. Ok, some of you readers may be thinking, "do you not work for Webtrends Adron? Go build this stuff!" Well maybe others and I am, but I am still frustrated at not having it right now. It seems this is something that is slowly slipping by in this industry and we need a centralizing effort for all these data points to help in actually making sense of them.
A fellow analytics & marketing professional, Rodica Buzescu writes in her blog Morphing Through Time a post titled Web Analytics ? Leaving a Lot to Be Desired. She lays out the current analytics situation very clearly. There is no tool that really bridges the data together easily. Some BI Pros out there may say "oh but I have all that stuff together". This may be true, but how much time and effort did that take? What we need is a centralized management solution for this data. Something to bridge the data together to make it actual, usable, and actionable information.
I have also had a number of conversations with Eric Peterson about various analytics on various platforms. One such paltform is Twitalyzer (@twitalyzer), that he and @katzpdx have put together. This is a prime example however, of a very useful tool, but something that lies outside of other tools. The question is, how to integrate and what to integrate.
As an analytics advocate, practitioner, and developer myself I have one huge issue with a lot of my analytics that I use. Webtrends Analytics & Data Mart help me bring most of those together. However there are a number of things that are still disparate and segmented in the wrong areas.
So with this post as it stands, what do people want joined? Where are all these data points that people want? I think something good just may come out of this desire, but the ideas do have to come together solidly. I have things I can?t disclose, but I know there are minds here at Webtrends thinking about bridging this gap right here and right now.