Enterprises must leverage the best use of analytics without falling into the data analysis trap

Most companies use some form of analytics, either embedded analytics or external, but ultimately fail to make full use of them. A recent study by Harvard Business Review showed "that most companies have a long way to go before they fully capitalize on the power of analytics." With that in mind, below are x ways you can start making better use of analytics today.

Understand what analytics is and how it can help you

To make good use of analytics, you need to understand what it can do for you. You should also understand the difference between business intelligence and data analytics. Analytics is the way to extract information from your company data. There are many types of analytics, but the two main ones are descriptive and predictive analytics.

Descriptive Analysis: This type of analysis involves drawing conclusions based on existing data by looking at common characteristics that drive certain actions. For example, if you did a descriptive analysis on your sales force and looked at the data of sales reps with 10+ years of experience vs 1-5 years, it would be easy to see that experience level is a major factor in driving sales performance.

Prediction Analysis: This type of analysis uses algorithms to create predictive models based on historical data, such as time series, cross-sectional data or geo-spatial data. These models allow you to predict future outcomes based on the data alone. For example, a model could provide a prediction of what a company's revenues will be next year if this year's factors stay the same.

Set goals for yourself and use analytics to track your progress

You can really maximize the benefit you get from your analytics by using data analysis to track how well you adhere to goals and objectives. For example, if you're a manager at a company, you may set a goal of 10% yearly growth in revenue. Then, every month you can use your analytics to track how well the team is performing compared to your goal and make changes accordingly to get closer to the end result that you want.

By using analytics to track your progress toward a goal, you can also see how well different plans or strategies are working. These insights can help you make decisions for the future about what works best and invest in the ideas that will drive revenue growth.

Use different types of data to get a better understanding of your audience

If you aren't using data to track your audience engagement, you're missing out on valuable insight into how people are interacting with your digital content. Using analytics to track user behavior can help you understand what's important to them and the ways that they use your site or app. It can also give you an idea of how well your website is optimized for its target audience. This information can help you make decisions about what pages on your site are most effective, which ad campaigns work best and how to continually improve the user experience or the kinds of posts that work best on places like Twitter. 

Experiment with different ways of analyzing your data

Another cool advantage of using analytics to track your audience engagement is the ability to run experiments. For example, let's say you're launching a new ad campaign and want to see which viewers click on the ads most frequently. You can test out different ads with multiple audiences and then measure those results against analytics data to see which ad received the highest click rate.

Don't fall into the data analysis trap of only reading your data one way. There are many different ways to approach data analysis and experiment with what gives you the most valuable insights.

Use analytics to improve your marketing and website design

When you know what your audience wants and how they interact with your site or app, you can use those insights to create marketing campaigns that will be more effective. 

For example, using analytics data about the pages on your site that get the highest traffic can help you inform future marketing campaigns by associating more popular pages with keywords.

You can also use the data to inform your website design to help you create an experience that is more useful and effective for your audience. For example, if you find out that users are quickly moving past a certain page, you may consider changing the design or layout of the page to make it easier to use.

Conclusion

Analytics are an important part of any digital business. They offer a wealth of important data that can help you make better decisions and optimize your work. When used correctly, analytics can give you an advantage over your competitors and help grow any business.