Have you ever lost money in a vending machine?  Even more tantalizing is when you put money in, make a selection and then said selection gets stuck?  No matter how hard you shake and bang the machine your selection hangs on for dear life.  They’ve added a theft shield in the bin so there’s no way you can stick your arm up there to snag the selection.  Your only choice, if you are lucky, is to call the 1-800 number and give them your info and wait 6 weeks for your $0.75 check to arrive in the mail so that you can go deposit it and be vindicated.

In a lot of ways, the life of a web analyst parallels the above scenario.  Sometimes, you make a recommendation based on data that you’ve pulled for an analysis and it falls on deaf ears.  No action is ever taken upon your recommendation.  Other times, your recommendations are heard, and the feedback that you receive is that this is great insight and the creative team is going to take action to make the necessary changes.  The problem is, the creative or development process can sometimes take weeks or months to complete.  (Depending on the size and efficiency of your company)

If you are like me, you need instant satisfaction.  So weeks or months just won’t do, much like getting a check for $0.75 six weeks after it was lost in the vending machine doesn’t really rectify that disappointed feeling you get when your selection teeters on the edge of your wits.  However, more important than your need for satisfaction is the needs of the customer.

You pulled customer data and made a recommendation based off of this data.  Data tells you what the customers are doing, or possibly what they are not doing but you want them to do.  Thus your recommendation is based off of the customer.  It’s possible that you have qualitative information to support your analysis.  So the recommendations are based off of what the customer is telling you and thus if there’s an issue that needs to be addressed it can’t wait weeks or months.

Of course all of this depends on the context of what you are reporting on.  If you are reporting on a one-off project that won’t be live again for another few months, then sure, the changes can take a few weeks to take place.  But if you are reporting on a new feature that went live on your site and you discover something major that needs to be changed, your creative or development team needs to be able to react quickly.  Typically, small companies can react fairly quickly and make changes, but large companies seem to be more cautious and make absoulutely sure there’s no issues with something before going live.  This can be very frustrating.

I’d love to hear your experience with this be it with a small, medium or large company.