Jacques Warren: It’s neither a tail nor a trunk

Guest Blogger: Jacques Warren, Bell Business Solutions

If you understand French, you may have seen Bernard Werber’s latest film, “Nos amis, les Terriens (Our Friends, the Earthlings). The movie is shot as if it was a documentary made by aliens. It is quite funny, because their interpretations (the extra terrestrials) of our human behaviors are completely off the mark. After a while, the reason for so many (and funny) misinterpretations becomes clear; the aliens base their conclusions on what they see!! They just didn’t ask why we do what we do!

I would very much relate behavioral analysis (what most people typically call “Web Analytics”) to “watching” what people do on a Web site. It’s really informative, but at some point, one might start to draw conclusions that are far from being accurate. Unless you ask visitors, a lot can escape you, which means that decisions can be made, with expected results, on false assumptions.

You shouldn’t see attitudinal analysis as the latest trend. A lot of people were not talking about it before, because we all thought that watching was enough (except my pals at iPerceptions!). We should have done it together with behavioral analysis a long time ago. I stress “together”, here. I would even dare to say that, if you have a limited amount of money you can spend on analytics (and who doesn’t?), spend less on behavioral, so you still have enough to seriously conduct your attitudinal analysis.

I repeat: both are essential. Yes, reconciling them demands efforts and analysis acumen. But you wouldn’t describe an elephant based on what a trunk is, would you?