Regardless of the topic I’m speaking on, I always talk about using an analytics program. Without metrics/data, you can’t make informed decisions.
So it’s great that Yahoo! is stressing analtyics at the Yahoo! Merchant Summit (an event for their bigger merchants). Dennis Mortensen, Director of Data Insights, Yahoo! gave some quick tips, such as scheduling alerts. Yahoo! Analytics is baked into Yahoo! Merchant Solutions (big changes/updates to the analytics product in October of last year and April of this year).
Dennis, Jonathan Garris (ECMTA, Gotham City Online), and Michael Whitaker (Monitus) are now speaking on an analytics panel.
The one thing missing from the discussion, that’s missing from a lot of merchant related analytics discussions, is Lifetime Value of the Visitor.
How well do you track lifetime value…or is everything based on a single, short event?
I used to wonder why nobody ever talked about lifetime value, but then I realized that unless you are selling consumables (ink cartridges, etc.) gathering enough data to make meaningful decisions is really difficult and time consuming. So it’s easier to just focus on gross profit from the one sale.
That being said, companies who can figure out how to accurately guage LTV have a huge advantage over those who don’t.
About time, this has been something missing from analytics.