Why analyze your web data? First of all, analyzing your online clickstream and other web data can bring benefits such as great insight into customer behavior patterns, organization and supplier relations, profitability, competitors, sales and marketing activity and the market in general.  Businesses looking to improve in all these areas cannot afford to overlook web data analysis. We strongly believe that technologies like bime and its approach to web data analysis are necessary today for web analysts and general data analysts to get hold of the information required to make better and informed business decisions. Understanding your customers is not easy: it requires sophisticated analytic capabilities that allow you to analyze large volumes of data.

Secondly, and more specific to web analytics data, it’s important to be able to obtain knowledge about your web traffic, visitor behavior, and other website measurements (don’t forget: knowledge is power). Your web analytics analysis can help make those small but ever-important changes to your website, social networks, marketing or advertising activities, and other aspects of your operations. The significance of these changes might seem small – but never underestimate the enormous effect they can have combined.

Not only this, but the ability to mix web data with other sources of data – in-house conventional data such as CRM, sales, financial data etc. is imperative.  Analyzing one source might not be enough – integration is often the key to successful insight.

We think the analytics space is constantly changing, and in a Web 2.0 world, organizations need highly sophisticated analytic capabilities which are able to handle both the huge volume and variety of data generated online. We are firm believers that it is important to be able to include web-based data within your analyses, and so we are working hard to bring you the best web data analysis experience possible!

Analyze your web data now.

“Today, there is an abundance of data — some would say an overabundance — with a wide array of tools to analyse it. Executives are beginning to realise that, if the deluge of information is to be exploited to the full, information should be widely shared, not hoarded. Only then can firms gain the insights that will put them ahead of their rivals.”

What can companies do to ride the wave ahead of their rivals?

• Leading companies are keenly focused on data

  The best corporate users of data dedicate a significant amount of time to working out what type of information they should monitor and who requires it. They also invest in technology and training to make sure individuals are able to leverage and capitalize on the data they have collected.



• Accuracy trumps detail

  Accuracy and timeliness are the most important attributes of data, over and above the level of detail offered. This is because getting a basic insight—about a new prospect, a change in the price of some raw material, or an emerging problem at a manufacturing plant—is more valuable than being able to analyze every detail about it. There are times when you will need to take a decision without 100% of the information you need…knowing this data is at least accurate, even if it’s not complete, will put you at a distinct advantage.



• A top-down approach may stifle competitiveness

  Companies sometimes unintentionally approach data from solely a management perspective and can make the mistake of ignoring its value to others lower down the organizational hierarchy. To gain advantage, a company should find ways to “democratize” their data. This could be done by sharing data up and down within the organization, or making the data accessible across the organization in order to get a broader perspective. Of the companies surveyed, 77% of those that aim their data initiatives at all employees, regardless of level, claim they have found ways to make data extremely valuable to their business. Only 65% of companies where the data initiatives are intended primarily for managers agreed.



• Information supports competition in many ways

  77% of respondents said data make an important contribution to their customer support efforts, and 71% say it helps them support their sales processes. Operations, cost management and product development are all aided by data too. A less common benefit — cited by around 50% of all companies — is the contribution that business insights have made to helping executives enhance brand awareness.

I read with interest a point made about the ease of use of data analysis software – “Systems that are too complicated can also be a problem. A company may intend to let employees benefit equally from data and technology, but can undermine that goal if its software requires a high level of technical sophistication.”

We often see this being one of the several reasons people make the switch to Bime. Being so easy to use makes it easy for anyone across an organization to exploit their data. And in addition, the absence of the need to invest heavily in training means that companies free up more resources to focus on growing the business.

Remember the 3 broad things to consider if you want to gain a competitive advantage from your data:

1. Focus on the right data (don’t be afraid to discard what is not useful)
2. Make data easily useable and easily accessible by employees – democratize your data – know who needs what
3. Encourage data champions across the company, and promote their success – demonstrate the benefit of your data analysis system for competitive advantage and they are more likely to follow suit!

Using filters is easiest to explain using an example, so we’ll have a look at the filter “top”. Top filters out all but the greatest value in a data set, but the principles are the same for all filters. Top can be extended to include more than one value, so for example top 2 zooms in on the two greatest values.

This table can be saved to a dashboard and made public. Any filters then applied by users in the dashboard (called global filters) will be applied to the complete data set and to all queries in that dashboard.

Say now the user applies a top 3 global filter (on the dashboard). This filter overrides the query specific top 2 filter and so three values will be seen. When the global filter is removed, the original top 2 filter becomes dominant again so only the highest two values are shown. The two queries below have top 2 applied; try changing this to top 3 by selecting the Top tab (on the far right) and changing the value from 2 to 3. You will see the results change for both queries :

If you then remove this global filter by unchecking the Top box, both queries revert to their original filters (both top 2).

If our top 2 filtered query is included in a dashboard where the other queries have the same filter (as in the example above), we see the top 2 option selected on the global filter panel. This is because top 2 is essentially a global filter in this case. If it is saved in a dashboard that contains queries with other filters or no filter, each keeps its own filters and no global filter toggle is checked.

The dashboard below contains a query with a top 3 filter, and one without a filter. Observe, no global filter toggle is checked.

So, you can see that it is important to apply filters at the right time to achieve the required result. Applying the filters strategically allows users of your dashboards to see the important results found during data exploration, but to override the filters and explore all of the data. It also allows users to compare like with like in dashboards once they have evaluated each visualization independantly.

There are lots of different filters available in Bime, allowing you to zoom in and analyse any cross-section of your data. Log in now to try them out.