Saturday, January 9, 2016

Overview of General Analytics

If you search for the key term “Analytics” in any search engine, there are lots of search results. The simplest definition of Analytics from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytics is "the science of analysis". A simple and practical definition, however, would be how an entity (i.e., business) arrives at an optimal or realistic decision based on existing data. Common applications of Analytics include the study of business data using statistical analysis in order to discover and understand historical patterns with an eye to predict and improve business performance in the future.

We need to focus on the questions for which we are looking an answer. Analytics is also a kind of research. The research mainly depends on the research designs. Analytics is based on the two types of research designs.

a) Observational Design
b) Experimental Design

For getting more accurate answer we need to choose the proper design.

Observational Design: All of you have heard about astrology on the web or personal horoscope. They ask you your name, mail id, birth date (sometimes birth time), sex, country etc. Actually what is this information? This is the primary data required to provide your horoscope. This is also a kind of analysis on the basis of supplied data they offer your horoscope.

Analysis of already collected data comes under the observational design.

Experimental Design: In this method you can establish the objectives and processes necessary to deliver results in accordance with the expected output. Web site optimization techniques such as A/B testing and Multivariate testing (MVT) comes under this category. We use factorial experimental design to optimize our website. The process of experimental design is matches with Deming’s PDCA cycle, where P-Plan, D-Do, C-Check and A-Act.

Doing experiments and achieving the expected outcome is a continual process.

We analyze data for the following reasons:
· Testing our assumptions and making decisions
· Predicting the future trends

By doing this we try to find out what happened, what is going on and what should we do to achieve a success. 

2 comments:

  1. Hello Bhagawat

    I noticed you mentioned on Justin Cutroni's Blog you wanted to share some GA dashbords with your readers. Did you ever post those?

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  2. Hey Dustin,

    Wish you happy new year! Sorry for delay in response.

    I want to share few ready-made dashboards but was not aware how can we share so it gets applied. I had asked Justin and got the answer too.

    Please let me know what dashboard are you looking for specially?

    Thanks,
    Bhagawat.

    ReplyDelete