Deal or no Deal: Would You Entrust Your Website Performance Analysis to a Software Application?
Should your Website performance be assessed by a human expert or by a piece of software is a dilemma that many E-Business managers are currently faced with. There is no easy answer to this question. The mix of the Website performance assessment tools and techniques considered for use is going to vary depending on a company?s specific needs and requirements. Detailed analysis of these tools and techniques is obviously well beyond the scope of this article. All I would like to do is to identify the main factors that should be taken into account when making the selection of these Website performance assessment tools and processes.
In business (E-Business included), performance assessments are believed to require objectivity, consistency and availability of a clear assessment framework. The assessment should be carried out against objective benchmarks rather than subjective mindset. That is why companies that develop and sell website performance analysis software claim that if you purchase a reliable application, no human touch will be required. After all, software is never going to be subjective. It is going to focus on raw objective data and it is highly impossible that it will have any mistakes in its calculations.
At first, this proposition appears to be extremely appealing. If you hire an E-Business consultant to carry out the assessment, it is going to be a relatively expensive and time-consuming project and no consultant will be able to give your Website a complete ?health check-up? over the night. Also, unlike software-driven analysis, human-driven analysis may lack some statistical accuracy. So does it mean that state-of-art Website performance analysis software application can represent an ultimate solution for the companies?
Unfortunately or fortunately, it is still impossible to carry out a competent Website performance analysis without human involvement. Software applications can be utilised as powerful data collection tools but they are not very efficient at interpreting the data. ?Silicon brains? are good for quantitative assessments. They can enable you to easily obtain information about the number of clicks your Website gets, functionality of software applications, transaction processing etc. However, software applications are still unable to carry out qualitative analysis of the Website performance. Thus, human touch is still going to be needed for assessing the management policies and procedures, user-friendliness, informational content and emotional appeal of the Website.
So does it mean that Website performance analysis software is useless? Far from it! It is essential for the E-Business managers to realise that the two approaches to the Website performance analysis discussed above are complimentary rather than contradictory. No assessment can be accurate without statistical performance indicators being available. At the same time, no amount of data can substitute thoughtful evaluations of an industry expert. Besides, E-Business analysts are going to require at least some basic technology-enabled tools and applications. For example if an E-Business consultant wants to identify the needs of the existing target audience of its Website, it has to engage into a two-step process. The first step is going to involve establishing the number of visitors (return visitors in particular) the Website gets, number of subscribed members, demographic information about the customers and other relevant statistical information. This step can be completed fully through the use of adequate software applications such as Web Metrics. Once the data analysis is complete, the statistical information is sorted and the target audience is identified, it is time for the E-Business consultant to employ his value judgement and to put together a list of recommendations for the company to follow.
We should never forget that the software applications are being written by the humans, for the humans and with human end users and beneficiaries in mind but they are by no means capable of understanding the dynamics of human behaviour. Nor can they incorporate the emotional factors in to the assessments. On the other hand, we should take advantage of the capabilities these applications offer and put them to good use.
Michael Baron is the founder and CEO of Baron Consulting (BC) ? one of the leading E-commerce consultancy and training service providers in Australia. Michael has been involved in Electronic Commerce since 1997. He has completed over twenty E-Commerce projects in the areas of E-Learning Software Development, Web Site Development, Web Site Mapping and Electronic Marketing for both government and commercial organisations in Australia and overseas. Michael has also published a number of research and white papers and has been lecturing in Electronic Commerce at some of the leading Australian Universities. He is a sought-after speaker at E-Commerce Conferences, Forums and Seminars.
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