As technology begins to take over our day to day, involuntary social-skill building opportunities, many are losing, or never gaining, the ability to understand and connect with others on a personal level. Simple tasks like grocery shopping, which once led to produce conversations, meat counter discussions or even cashier chit chat, now are ordered on line and brought to your car without even having to talk to the employee loading your trunk.
Almost everything that once was done in person and included friendly conversations with strangers, can now be done online. Digital analytics control what we know about our consumers, how we adjust to increase sales or what we should change to better serve them. Or so we believe. But, can analytics answer all your consumer questions? Can reading the graph of increases and decreases in your daily website visits tell you ALL the answers to “why” they stopped visiting, buying or caring about your product. The answer is a resounding NO!
Marketers who believe online analytics are the first, last and only way to predict consumer behavior have bought into the generational acceptance of the lack of personal contact. You changed your website banner and now there are fewer multi-page visits. Your color scheme was adjusted for the season and now less people are visiting your website, or your social media “local business” campaign, that use to drive traffic, is now stagnant. Simply reading the results and attributing them to simple changes, will not give you the insight you need to make all the necessary adjustments. You must know and understand your people. Putting people first will help make sense of the changes that were recorded in the digital history.
The insight and responsiveness that comes from connecting with your clients or customers will enrich your interpretation of the data supplied by your analytics.This combination will result in a real strategy for responsive growth. You don’t need to be able to look into their eyes and read their minds. But you do need to build a personal connection and client understanding to turn analytics into results. Even as our desire for instant gratification, online shopping and siri style answers continues to grow, updating your business in the digital world, can and should combine personal connections with digital insights.