Numbers vs Data

😬83% drop in website impressions
🍾why are we celebrating this win!

This is a story about the difference between numbers and data. Numbers are just that, there’s no context. It’s like looking at full time results, they don’t tell you what the match was like. When you combine the numbers with some context, you get meaningful data. A 1-0 result may have had 1 shot on target or 40 shots on target. Adding this context gives you a better understanding of what happened in the game.

In our example we starting monitoring a new clients website at the beginning of February. When we looked at the number of impressions combined with the most popular search terms, for the site, we discovered a problem. 9 of the top 10 searches were junk, relating to mobile phone upgrades - the site had been hacked, in the past. Our first job then became about securing the website and clearing the malicious code.

One month later and the sites impressions have dropped by 83%, in comparison to January, but the data is more valid. It’s a better impression of what real users are doing and we can now begin the journey of really understanding what is happening on the site. How genuine users navigate the site and what improvements we need to make.

So do you look at the numbers or the data? When did you last put context behind your numbers? If you’d like an analytical website review please contact us.