Web Analytics: The Syncretic Approach

Concord is a mighty rampart - Erasmus

Picture this: Leonard da Vinci is commissioned to paint his Last Supper fresco, but instead of the mixture of pitch, gesso, mastic, and tempera that he used in reality to produce his masterpiece on dry wall, in this counterfactual he is only given a bucket of plain old industrial paint.

Or picture this: Gutzon Borglum is asked to carve out the likenesses of the four presidents into Mount Rushmore, but he and his team are only allowed to use sledgehammers and no other tools.

We both know that producing anything of value under these restrictive terms is simply not plausible.

Artists and architects (and analysts!) alike need multiple tools to produce masterful works. Leveraging the distinct functionalities of multiple tools is the means through which the end (the masterwork) is achieved.

I find that too often as vendors we puff our chest out and we single-mindedly trumpet the value of our own tool/solution, our own stream of customer insight, to the detriment of all the other valid streams out there. We forget all too easily that our software, our ASP solution, or our methodology is but one of many valid approaches for gaging the minds of visitors.

Here's where syncretism comes in. Syncretism is an attempt at inclusion; it's an attempt to reconcile seemingly disparate systems of thought (read: streams of customer insight) that all point toward an underlying truth.

What constitutes a valid stream? Here's a simple answer: if it tells you something unexpected about your online visitors, then it's a valid stream. The web is vast and variegated. Insights are buried everywhere: in clicks, Facebook profiles, A/B tests, Google searches, surveys, YouTube clips embedded in blogs, the press releases of your competitors--it's a limitless list. And each stream becomes one of the myriad concentric components of the onion that Avinash Kaushik has adduced as the model for Web Analytics 2.0.

It's an eclectic way of looking at things, and it is mindful of the fact that no one company will ever monopolize the unearthing of actionable insights from visitors.

So, what's in your toolbox?