Do you want to excel with your company? Do you still base your strategic decisions on causal connections and intuition? Data is the driving force behind success. Politicians, entrepreneurs, marketers and even self-employed people increasingly rely on data. The traditional approach of making decisions based on ‘experience’ and ‘gut feeling’ is slowly fading into the background. This is due to the explosive growth of digital tools and an increasing level of digital knowledge. But what does this mean for you? Why is data so important, and what happens if the data you use is not reliable or relevant?
What is data and why is it important?
Data simply means ‘data’ and is an abstract term for specific events, facts or actions. Although data is often taken for granted, the challenge lies in understanding it correctly. Incorrect interpretation leads to wrong conclusions, which may mean that your decisions do not correspond to reality.
How data contributes to turnover and can be confusing.
The image below illustrates an important distinction in types of data.
A distinction is made between:
- Offline data: data collected through physical events such as store visits, flyers or telephone calls.
- Online data: data from digital channels such as websites, emails or social media.
Within both categories you can further distinguish between relevant and non-relevant data. This distinction is important because not all data is equally valuable.
The difference between relevant and non-relevant data
Let’s clarify this difference with an example. Suppose you run a restaurant in Amsterdam with a website on which orders can be placed. A marketing agency writes blogs about the ingredients of your dishes, because the competition in that subject is low.
After a year you receive many visitors, but the orders are not forthcoming. Why? Because these visitors were interested in ingredients and not in ordering meals.
Instead, blogs like the following would have yielded more results:
- “The 5 most popular restaurants in Amsterdam.”
- “Why our pizzas are unique.”
- “The best Italian dishes to order in Amsterdam.”
These topics are aimed at people who:
- Live within your delivery area.
- Actively looking for restaurants in Amsterdam.
- Interested in ordering, not cooking.
Relevant data helps you understand your customers better. In fact, it is the key to growth and success.
How do you know if your data is relevant?
Misinterpreting data entails major risks. Data is nothing more than information derived from a specific event, but it starts with measurement. Therefore, ask yourself the following questions:
- Am I measuring the right events in the right way?
- Do I compare data in a realistic way?
Many companies focus on superficial figures such as visitor numbers or phone calls. These are vague key figures that can be misleading. To gain real insights you have to go beyond just the surface.
Offline conversions: linking online and offline data
Offline conversion tracking is important for companies with a physical location, for example. This allows you to measure the impact of your online campaigns on offline sales. This is how it works in main events:
- A user clicks on an ad and visits your website.
- The user schedules an appointment via a form.
- The user visits your physical location and pays €25.
- This value is manually linked to your online data.
- You now know that customer X from campaign Y earns €25. Otherwise you only saw that someone came to the location.
By linking offline conversions back to your digital system, you get a more complete picture of your return on investments. Who wouldn’t want that?
Reliable data: the key to trust
Insight into complete data ensures that you can make strategic choices with confidence. Bad data, on the other hand, leads to campaigns without profits or less profit, wrong investments and missed opportunities.
Example: Suppose your webshop data shows that a specific product category sells well in the winter. You decide to respond to this by increasing the stock. But what if this data is incorrect or incomplete? You would be wasting valuable resources.
The influence of cookies and privacy rules on your data
Cookies play a very important role in collecting data about website users. They provide insight into:
- Visitor behavior: which pages are visited, how long people stay and what they click on.
- Returning visitors: cookies help identify preferences of returning customers.
Ideally, you want as many website visitors as possible to agree to all cookies. Since October 1, 2019 However, it is no longer allowed to use pre-checked checkboxes for non-essential cookies. This makes it more challenging to get users to agree to extensive data collection. According to GDPR rules, the user must actively consent to enabling non-essential cookies.
How can you deal with this?
- Make sure that your cookie policy is completed as accurately as possible. You do this by placing it in the middle of the screen.
- Look at best practices: see how companies such as Coolblue and NRC shape their cookie policies and what methods they use to convince users to accept cookies. CoolBlue, for example, uses humor to make it seem more light-hearted.
- Server-side tracking: this leaves more control over data with the company itself, without being dependent on third-party cookies.
- Account registration incentives: Encourage voluntary data sharing by offering benefits when creating an account. For example: “Get 5% off your first order when you create an account.”
So:
- Data is important for strategic growth.
- Not all data is relevant; focus on what’s really important.
- Privacy rules require a smart approach.
Source: www.frankwatching.com
