Creating actionable insights from your data

VIEW TRANSCRIPT Website analytics can offer a wealth of information about who is visiting your website and where they came from. But while collecting data is important, knowing what to do with this information is what can truly add value to a business. In this lesson we will explain what an actionable insights are, how to identify them, and how you can use metrics to turn your data into a story that can help improve your business. So, how do we define an insight? To put it simply, it’s analysing ‘why’ something has happened. Insights are critical to determine actions and help you focus on what is important to your business goals. An actionable insight takes this analysis one step further and determines what to do next, so that you can successfully improve and refine what you’re doing. To uncover your own actionable insights, try following these six steps: define your goal: Clearly outline what your campaign aims to achieve collect the data. Gather and organise any statistics or information relevant to your goal interpret the data: Analyse trends and any deviations from those trends to see how this has affected meeting your goals develop recommendations: Provide justified suggestions on how to improve business practices based on what you have learned from your data analysis take action: Put your recommendations into practice and create an action plan to test your assumptions, and finally review your outcomes: Evaluate whether your actions have had the desired impact and make note of how you can further optimise to improve results. Let’s look at an online example that explores how data can lead to actionable insights. Susie is part of a team responsible for planning a charity fun run, and this year her goal is to get 250 people to register. As her goal is to increase attendance, the data she collects from her analytics software could include how many people completed the sign up form, which online channel they used to register, and how many people shared posts on social media. Analytics reveal that social media channels are the main source of sign ups, so next Susie wants to determine which social media posts were most effective at driving registrations. When interpreting the data, the trend emerges that registered runners who shares the charity’s social media posts on their personal accounts generated the highest number of new registrations. By looking at these insights, Susie can conclude that registered runners become powerful ambassadors and are able to spread the word of the race quickly and efficiently, encouraging more sign-ups. So, to turn this into an actionable insight, Susie now needs to combine the data gathered with an action that can put her research to good use. For example, she could design a series of social media posts that provide easy instructions on how registered runners can promote the Fun Run across their own social network. Let’s look at a case study from a real business that used actionable insights to help them reach their goals. Now that we’ve explored how to draw actionable insights from data, think about how you can use your online data to help make a decision you're currently facing. What would you like to learn from the information you have available and how can an actionable insight help bring you closer to your goals?